


this be the verse

by rathxritter



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No SHIELD (Marvel), F/M, Roadkill AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:00:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 40,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27800410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rathxritter/pseuds/rathxritter
Summary: With the general election on the horizon, Labour are ahead in the polls...Lives are falling apart or are being picked apart by the opposition. Personal revelations are used to further one’s own political agenda. And everyone’s eyes are on the ultimate political prize.
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 20
Kudos: 31





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd.

"So you're Lord Simmons' daughter?" asks Fitz. 

The sentence sounds like an accusation rather than a simple question and for a moment he wants to beg her to let him rephrase it in order to pay more attention to the articulation of every sound, to the stress of every syllable. It lands violently, flatly, coldly, and lingers in the air between them as every word is registered and taken note of, eyes wide open in disbelief. 

Slowly, Jemma turns her head to look at him without losing any of her usual composure, her lips slightly parted, chin held up high. In her green silk dress that seems more fitting for a pre-war dinner than a dinner with colleagues amidst the British élite, for a hot August evening, the dusk slowly descending on the country, rather than a frigid and unsparing December night, she looks like a work of art - her whole back exposed, low cut, exposed freckled skin. A goddess in viridian, the incarnation or product of Toryism and conditioning, she looks like she could burn the whole world for revenge or to achieve her goals - condescending with people twice her age sitting next to her at dinner, her curled lip betraying her annoyance. 

"I mean, you are Lord Simmons' daughter, aren't you?" he asks again, syllables coming out in rapid succession as he stumbles on his own words. They simply won't fit and he could spend the next five minutes trying to explain himself without ever getting it right, something about her is unsettling, in a pleasant sort of way. He wants to skip the inanities and get straight to the point, apologize for having sat in front of her at dinner without ever speaking a word to her. It's not that he doesn't like her, it's that she's intimidating and all edges, with her perfect RP and that manner of doing things that comes with class, with nobility and money.

"I prefer 'the PM's political advisor'," she answers flatly.

"Leopold Fitz."

"Jemma Simmons."

There's a faint smell of mint and frost in the air, a wintery smell that fills his nostrils as he stands next to the ajar window. Beside them, hanging on the wall, an enormous painting of a battle, exquisite brushwork, heavy and ancient frame, and in a corner the signature of an artist he never bothered learning about when he was in school. It's in the details, they will without a doubt remain fresh in his memories, the moment too important to simply be forgotten - washed out, perhaps, but still there.

"Tedious dinner," says Jemma as someone in the room cracks a joke that would suit a school lavatory better than a dinner party.

"Excellent food."

"The best. Still doesn't make it up for the company." She stops and leans closer to him, lowering her voice when she says, "You must find me a hypocrite."

"Not at all. I don't even know you."

"But you know of me."

"Who doesn't?"

She laughs, a million noises exploding at once. Her face looks softer amidst the genuine entertainment, it feels as though she's not laughing at him but at herself. It's a simple truth, the whole country, perhaps, exaggeratedly, knows about her. There was a time, years ago now, he must have been at university or just done with it, when her face appeared on newspapers weekly. The kind of news that made people think that the rich were damned and unhappy, trapped in a self-serving and self-destructive spiral. 

"Ah, fervent reader of tabloid newspapers, are you?" She asks at last. "Not all of the things were true. Some of them, yes, but not all of them. Mostly the ones that were reported around the time of any election."

"No," he answers dismissively. "I mean, Westminster isn't that big. People gossip, universally they do."

"Humour me for a moment then. What exactly are they saying? That papa must have had something to do with it? That I am spying for him?"

"No, I think you are very clever... They." He coughs and looks away. "They say you are very clever. You don't seem to spend too much time thinking about how something will make you look like in the eyes of the press. You just do things. Respectfully."

"Respectfully?"

"You follow the rules. No one with some brain would ever believe that you do your father's bidding."

"What's this now?"

"Your little row earlier this evening? You call each other by surname, matter-of-factly," he explains. 

The words sound off and inappropriate in his mouth and not that he is or considers himself to be an expert when it comes to functional families, but there always seems to be lingering mutual hatred and violence underneath the overtly formal circumstantial words that she and Lord Simmons exchange - as if both of them would rather be someplace else rather than having to face each other and communicate. Standing in the entrance hall, like two furies entering war: an odd and unexpected scene to find as he exited the bathroom, wiping his glasses clean - two blurry figures and their voices growing louder and louder.

"I really wasn't eavesdropping," he explains. "But the two of you were very loud."

"So you heard? All of it?"

"It was hard not to. Some of it, not all of it."

Just a bit where her father accused her of purposefully and perpetually embarrassing him in front of his colleagues, his friends, the entire world. The same condescending tone as Jemma's at dinner - the same inflexion, the same edge around each word, the same way to twist and turn the world inside out to make it fit to one's own world view. A challenging tone, urging the other to prove them right.

"Righto," says Jemma, looking at the watch on her wrist. "The fireworks shall start soon."

"Are you in a hurry?"

"No," she answers matter-of-factly. "It is a rather uneventful week. I was thinking about skipping the fireworks and leaving."

"Would you like to come back to mine?" He blurts out, surprising himself with his own boldness. "For a drink."

"A drink?" She stretches out her hand, slightly, until her skin brushes against his, fingers touching and skin resting on skin. Her hands are cold against his. "Is that supposed to be a euphemism?" 

"A euphemism?" He gulps and looks away. The room feels hotter than before and his tie suffocating, but he refuses to play with it and let her win.

"You know an innocuous word used in place of something else that may be offensive or unpleasant."

"No. Yes. Sex." He coughs. "A drink, but you know- If you feel like it. If you want to."

And he wants her to want him, it. Not so much a saccharine union, but the slow descent into an amoral delight. Sex for sex sake with no promises or attachments - ridiculous animalistic lust, feeling better for however long it takes, and the never-ending curiosity about her, about the way she acts around people, see if it's as calculated as it looks, and the exposure of her own true self. They have been looking at each other the whole night tonight, from across the table at dinner, and now and between the two of them she seems to have been less subtle, though maybe it's his own wishful imagination. It's the boldest he's ever been and he doesn't regret it, it's too late and she can say no and they'll never think or talk about it ever again.

"Sex." Jemma pauses and for a moment he thinks that she might hit him open-palmed on the cheek for his sheer nerve and audacity. "Alright."

"Alright? Just like that?"

"What am I supposed to say?" She pauses. "I suppose we could filer à l'anglaise to one of the rooms, but if you'd rather drive back to-"

"Greenwich."

"Greenwich?"

"What's wrong with Greenwich?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all. A ten minutes drive, rather convenient. Do tell me, Fitz, do you always attend dinner parties and invite girls back to yours? Or guys. Surely you're driving them wild."

"No."

"I suppose... Well, we could give them something to talk about. Find an empty guest room and fuck while everyone else plans on stirring this country to ruin. Poetic, really. Your cock, my cunt... That sort of thing."

It's an interesting proposition, interesting enough to make him feel tempted to take her hand and leave the room, find the nearest bedroom or go back to the bathroom, lock the door and start kissing her. A bed or the counter, her legs wrapped around him, and his mouth on hers. Illicit and exciting, perhaps, but the fear of someone walking in on them or people talking is enough to ground him back to reality. Aseptic, only bound to end in mutual discomfort - they would end up hating each other before having gotten to the point of familiar friendliness.

"I'd rather keep some of my credibility," he explains wryly. Because if someone walks in on them or sees them or hears them, even just coming back with a distinctive dishevelled look, smelling of sweat and sex, they will talk and blow it up to enormous proportions. Not a scandal, but cheap gossip and jokes about having shagged Jemma Simmons. He could do anything noteworthy and his whole life would be reduced to a singular moment in a strange place, a moment of pleasure overshadowing the rest.

"Ah," she says. "The little boy from Lewis. You're afraid, aren't you? That people won't take you seriously. You must have a hard time already with you being who you are - Scottish, from an island, no top university on your CV."

"Don't do this."

"Whereas I would be taken seriously even though I was found with you buried deep inside me or, let's say on my knees with your cock in my mouth. Because that's what you're saying, is it not? Lady Jemma Simmons with the title and all that money, doing whatever she likes because people like her don't make mistakes."

It wouldn't be the first time, he wants to say. But words feel like bullets and her honesty and coldness already felt exposing enough. He knows, knows, that if he is to speak something it would be fully inappropriate and leave no space for anything, never mind apologies and reconciliation, never mind that the inflexion of her voice gives away disgust and a deep awareness of her own privilege and position. He thinks about that famous photograph all those years ago: Jemma Simmons in a nightclub, a twenty-pound note in her hand and glassy eyes. Clearly high. Whether the whiteness on her nose was cocaine or the low resolution of the shot is still to be settled. 

It's the money, the country runs on it, it's the one thing they all can agree on. That money is concrete and a fact and unmistakably real. It's about schools and banks and QCs. The simple masters of their ideologies. There are no arguments to be caused by that. It is impossible to find even the shadow of a doubt. Clarity in all its greatness in the hands of people who have hardly done anything noteworthy. Jemma Simmons used to snort cocaine in the weekends in squalid nightclubs, they say her father fucked a pig to enter one of Oxford's exclusive clubs, members of Parliament who wrecked restaurants simply because they could spend their days taking decisions about a country. Overshadowed and expected. People like them don't make mistakes, they're forgiven because of who they are.

"I know what you are going to say," says Jemma. "You're going to say that I am just like father. You're entitled to that opinion and allowed to voice it out loud."

"Would it make you happier if I did?"

"No, but that's hardly the point."

"Then I will not say it."

"Then we should go."

He follows her outside the room, making his way across the guests and raising his hand in salutation at some of his closest acquaintances, before picking up his coat from a pile. Dressing himself as he leaves the house, the gravel crackling under his feet, shifting and moving, and dust covering his shoes.

"How do you usually do this?" asks Jemma as they walk down the road, headed to the car park next to the train station. Clouds of condensation form as she speaks and the cold unsparing air reddens her cheek. 

"I don't. That is to say that I don't usually do this," he answers flatly, thinking about the packet of condoms in his nightstand, bought for a relationship that never reached its fulfilment. Not inexperienced, but he doesn't give himself away too lightly, it takes too much courage to have one night stands and his circle of friends has in recent years been reduced so much that there is no one to have casual sex with. "How do you usually do this?"

"It's not so much about driving home." She pauses. "You're terribly proper, aren't you?"

"Proper?"

"All of it. It's not an act, you really mean it. You're not the kind of person who would have a quick shag in a bathroom. You don't usually do this. Is any girl going to whack me on the head and going to rescue you from me?" She laughs. "A cosmic plan, lest I ruin you as soon as you touch me. But if you're sure-"

"Jemma-" His voice dies in his throat and he closes his mouth. He wants to have sex with her, wants to get her out of that godforsaken dress and look at her, shamefully, lasciviously, with permission. He has spent the entirety of dinner trying not to look at her, not to let his gaze wander to her chest, to her risky and quite revealing décolleté, feeling puzzled and confused at the suddenness and strength of such emotions.

"It's quite unexpected, that's all. How come they haven't eaten you alive yet?"

He shrugs. "It's not half as bad as you make it sound."

"What?" She pauses and turns around to look at him. The pale yellow light of a lamppost gives an odd colour to her skin and she looks ridiculous - all shadows and yellow light. "Good Lord! You really think that they take your lot seriously?"

"My what?"

"Good for you, Fitz. Good for you." She pats him on his back and laughs - cruelly and cold, verging on unfeeling - and the noise fills the air with an eerie sound of hilarity and joy at the thought of shocking people out of their worlds and into reality. 

"That's my car," he says as he points the keys to his old Fiat Panda. 

"Do you really not know or are you just pretending to see it? I'd assume it would make everyone furious."

"Does it matter?"

"You tell me."

"I'm not doing this."

"What?"

"Discussing politics with you. You work for the Prime Minister for God's sake."

"You don't trust me, do you?"

"I don't know you. It's different." He pauses. "And if something were to slip out. Suppose I were to say something... What is said in the bedroom stays in the bedroom for isn't that how it works?"

The drive is spent in comfortable silence, his eyes on the road her head turned to the window. Empty roads and all the windows facing the streets dark. Late at night, it's impossible to imagine the city buzzing with life and people, filling the streets, walking, driving, cycling.

"Not too bad a view," she says as they step out of the car and reach his apartment complex. Her voice doesn't sound convincing at all.

"Should I ask?"

"White terraced house that's all I'm going to say. Natural History Museum. Queen's Gate Gardens, Cromwell Gardens. Left."

"Christ," he replies as he opens the door. "First floor."

"Elevator?"

"Broken."

"Goodness. You are living the real second rate life, aren't you?" She pauses. "And that was a terrible joke. Shoes off?"

"Please."

"See," she says as she takes off her shoes and tidily places them next to the door. "That's something I don't usually do."

"Taking your shoes off?" He jokes.

"All of this. Too awkward. We should have stayed at that party. Should have gone to any of the spare rooms and fucked while everyone else was enjoying the fireworks. Christ, even the bathroom would have done the trick. They must be over by now. The fireworks, that is."

"Can I offer you a drink?"

"I was rather hoping we'd skip the inanities. Looking at you standing there... You should probably just kiss me."

"Can I?"

"Didn't I just suggest that you could?"

He laughs, softening the edges, getting rid of some of the tension and nervousness, and wonders how on earth people manage to do this more than once in their life. How easily they all make it seem, stepping over the inanities and get to the point, mutual agreement over a couple of moments of potential ecstasy. To lean into nothing without having to worry, having to swear that to live up to potential. All this boldness, this confidence, this foreign courage.

"I think I could use a drink," he says.

"Alright then. One drink," she replies and follows him into the kitchen. Then as he takes out a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet and two glasses, she adds, "Ah, the good stuff. It's not too bad, really. Cheers."

She smiles and tilts her glass against his before swallowing the amber liquid in one go, her head slightly tilted back. He steps forward just as she places her glass on the kitchen counter until their faces are but inches apart, their breaths mingling, hers hot against his neck. Tentatively she lifts her arms, reaching around his neck, drawing him firmly towards her. 

"Can I kiss you?" she whispers, slowly moving her had forwards with infinite and gentle delegations before she places her hand on his cheek and strokes his cheek with surprising tenderness.

He nods. 

Her mouth tastes of whiskey with a smoky aftertaste as she parts her lips and the tip of their tongues meet daringly, curiosity and anticipation filling their actions. Their kisses are soft but fervent. It's about breaking away and restarting their hearts and minds, the growing confidence and boldness, the increasing arousal, and the moan at the back of her throat - a deep guttural sound that marks the ultimate transformation. Slowly, he lifts her dress, te green silk soft and slippery in his hands, until he pulls it off her and she stands in front of him in her mismatching underwear, grinning at him.

"What?" he asks, completely befuddled. 

"Nothing. Are you going to get undressed or-"

As she gets rid of her bra, he clumsily tries to unzip his trousers, hopping on one foot and then the other, almost losing his balance, before taking off his glasses and dismissively placing them on the kitchen counter next to a bowl of apples that he should probably eat as soon as possible.

"Here," she says and undoes his tie. "Let me help you."

He tenses marginally and half-naked, in their underwear, they look at each other in amusement, the potential tabloid headers flash in his mind one after the other had they done this at the party, had they been discovered, before he steps towards her and gently resumes kissing her again, her jawline, nibbling at her earlobe, and on her mouth. Ripples of ecstasy as he hears her gasp with pleasure, and flashes of possibilities. He wants to make her feel good, get rid of that smug look on her face, and feels an overwhelming sense of devotion. A work of art, hands skilfully undoing and releasing.

"Come to bed with me," he says hoarsely, stepping back.

Extensive foreplay in a kitchen illuminated by the flickering neon lights above the stove isn't one of his top priorities and he stout-heartedly refuses to settle for the sofa: Awkwardness will settle and inevitably so, the least he can do is making sure that it won't be accompanied by discomfort - limbs dangling over the edge and polite small talk as they get back in their clothes. An all but seamless transition, but there's enough certainty in her look to be reassuring that there is something, despite the hesitance, that they are doing right.

No words are spoken as they walk down the short corridor, headed to his room. He is slightly embarrassed for the mess and finds some comfort in the knowledge that at least he got rid of the pile of clean clothes that have been sitting on his chair for a fortnight. 

"Condoms?" She asks.

"Bedside table."

As they keel over she says something else about the party and he answers,  _ fuck Britain _ \- meaning it. They laugh loudly, their whole bodies shaking, the mattress rocking under their weight. She takes charge once more, and then leans over to open the top drawer and take out the condoms. 

"I'm on the pill by the way," she says as she throws the package on the floor and starts to unwrap the condom with the same precision and seriousness she probably displays at work. "And I'm clean."

"Yeah, me too," he replies and looks at her, lowering herself on top of him.

It's lust dangerously mixing with idolatry, he could get lost in this feeling and vision, never get tired of the element of focus in her actions despite the sensation of rapture, despite the obliterating sensation that intercourse sometimes provides. Self-annihilating movements as he ends up on top, selfless and with no hints of embarrassment, as if they're mutually trying to erase themselves from existence and momentarily reduce the world to the two of them. Then, later, in two different moments, inhibited and unashamed, in pleasure and triumph, they come undone and for a couple of seconds, the world looks different as they hold onto each other for a little while longer.

"You can hand me that," says Jemma as she lifts the duvet. "The condom. I can throw it away before I collect my things."

No verbal colloquy can compare or seem adequate, the end abrupt anticipated by flat and uncaring words. He says, "Do you want me to give you a lift home?"

"No, I'm going to phone a taxi."

"Will you let me accompany to the door? I need a glass of water anyway."

"I mean, it's your house and I'm not going to sneak away like a thief in the night." She pauses and puts on her underwear. "We should do this again sometime."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta'd.

Her father leaves the courtroom in the dying gloom of a rainy afternoon in late February. The windowpanes in the corridor are already wet, droplets of water silently run down the cold glass as rain whispers against it, and the city outside looks greyer than usual - Victorian and polluted displaying none of the usual beauty, and if there is any beauty to be found, then it's most likely diminished and annihilated by the unfortunate circumstances and the unbearable awareness that a turning point has been missed, the last chance to stop the upcoming and predictable avalanche that will follow.

Everyone's steps are heavy on the black and white tiled floor and they echo across the empty corridors. The sound of heels mixing with that of low chatter, saturating the air triumphantly, filling every space and everyone's ears: The sound of victory and satisfaction, but not necessarily that of justice. The lawyers and judges pass in front of her still in their court apparel and are followed by her father in his best suit, his white hair combed back, walking with a lingering Bullingdon swagger that he never quite managed to shake off after the end of his university days. The world looks different and reshaped around then, they are the centre of it and make it stink of money, and Lord Simmons right in the middle - not so much the frail old figure that she remembers him to be during the excruciatingly long court case, but the cold and composed man who never quite managed to distinguish between love and violence, now looking bigger than life and not at all scared.

Sitting on one of the plastic chairs, she studies them attentively as if they were a living portrait - the brushwork so excellent that the resemblance to real-life seems cunning. For a moment she considers waiting there for another five minutes, ten, fifteen to avoid the short press conference outside and to see whether the journalist who accused her father of abusing his parliamentary position turns up - head down, walking quickly down the corridor, wanting it to be over. She wants to apologize to that anonymous woman who will, without a doubt, become the butt of every joke - an attention-seeking whore, perhaps, with sweat on her palms for all the envy and resentment, accusing those in power out of petty jealousy, because people like that always want to be like people like them. She wants to offer her support and is ready to fill a cheque with whatever amount to make up for it, pay the expenses, and put things right. She wants to apologize and say that she still believes in her father's guilt, that the proof that was handed over should have been enough, that she is sorry for the naivety her mother displayed during the trials, for people believing her and stout-heartedly refusing to believe that her mother could ever lie.

Outside, the street is buzzing with journalists. They are all standing under their umbrellas, microphones and recorders stretched out, one close to the other, like a bunch of ants, eager to get first-hand statements about the most clamorous event of the year after weeks and weeks of uncertainty. And her father, walking down the steps with his assistant on his left, looking like the embodiment of Englishness, the epitome of it, perhaps, with their centuries-old privilege that is usually masked as a genuine care for the people. The people, whatever that means, certainly not Mick from the pub or anyone like him, more like those in his own political party - the selected and deserving few.

It's on the mouth of every citizen, on the front pages of every paper, perfectly visible on the stalls of every newspaper stall, black capital letters on white background - of epic proportions, it had the potential of becoming the next Jarndyce v Jarndyce but instead of new wills, it was statements. Violent accusations and solid proof, several witnesses changing their stories multiple times (talk of bribery dismissed by blaming it on rotten memories and complete disorganization. A battle between two unequal powers and the whole country watching, judging, commenting - perfectly balanced, at the very start anyway, only to run completely out of hand. 

Lord Simmons abused his position for financial gain, a simple and believable piece of news because power always leads to more power, causing people to lose sight of everything that matters in order to achieve their one and only objective. Later enlarged by the gaps in his CV and his fishy relations with people on the other side of the pond. A speech held in the States for which he was paid a large sum of money. The attempt to have Americans interfering - more power and the equally rapid destruction of millions of lives - much more preferable to the European trading bloc. A transatlantic understanding, words muttered with contempt, fishy to say the least, done through a charity that never actually qualified as such.

As she exits the building, her mother raises her hand to attract her attention, and she walks quickly and quietly down the steps and to her right, finding shelter under her mother's black umbrella. The rain is falling more copiously than before, hitting on the pavement that reflects the feeble light cast by the streetlamps. It's a surreal view, all greys and yellow, and she'd rather be at Number 10 writing emails than watch her father's smug face as he halts his walk and smiles, charmingly and slimily, at the journalists in front of him.

The whole world seems to stop at once as soon as he opens his mouth, time slowing down and becoming infinitely slow, the moment of highest tension and the climax, the end. Lord Simmons says, "I knew lies were being told about me because of who I am."

A couple of people in the small crowd nod in agreement, all that seems to be missing is a  _ hear, hear  _ of approval and a celebratory pat on the back. Jemma feels her stomach twist and turn, a sense of nausea taking over her and mixing with disbelief at the idea of the entire world conspiring against the British élite, against her father in particular, as if people woke up with the sole purpose of destroying his career when really he is doing a wonderful job all by himself. Shadows everywhere, plotting, and the feeling of paranoia enhanced, perhaps, by his own dirty conscience.

"But I fought and I won."

A round of cheers and her mother smiling sternly at her husband. The perfect family, the three of them, standing in the street, rich and ruthless and stuffed with secrets. Jemma feels the compelling urge to step forwards and yell, publicly accuse her father - loudly, pointing fingers - to bring it all down, years and years of it. She wants a soft drink; to apologize until there are no apologies left in the world, nay the universe; go to a fucking nightclub, the most squalid one, snort cocaine with a bunch of strangers like she used to do at university; ruin herself to ruin her father and get rid of that soul-consuming and familiar rage that feels as ancient as it feels strong, this primordial driving force that has always pushed her dangerously close to the edge.

"And now this government, this new way of doing politics, they can both thrive and Britain shall prosper. I will not answer any question," Lord Simmons says. "As of now. Thank you."

The cameras flash as her father makes his way down the street, headed to the car. A moment of chaos before people start to disperse themselves, walking away in every possible direction, getting smaller and smaller as they hurry to their cars or to the Tube.

"Remember that we are going to have dinner tonight," says her mother, breaking the violent silence. She looks down at her phone and stuffs it back into her handbag. "The Ritz. In about forty minutes. I thought we could do something together before the concert."

"You said," replies Jemma wryly and looks away. "Is papa going to be there?"

"No, he has to meet the Prime Minister or so I've been told. Apparently, he has been summoned in Downing Street in the early afternoon, but-"

"Are they going to throw him out? Kick his arse down those steps and metaphorically close the gates behind him? They'd be doing everyone a favour."

"Jemma-"

"Honestly, mama, I cannot comprehend why you bothered inviting me to this celebratory dinner when papa is the one who is getting away with it."

"We don't know that, Jemma."

By God! How stupid does her mother think she is? Jemma clenches her fists, her nails digging into the soft skin of her palms, white semi circles on pink flesh. The pain is grounding, but not satisfying and she feels as if she could burn down buildings, dismantle them piece by piece before carefully picking apart both her family and herself until nothing but dust and ashes remain. The world, a better place then, silent and echoing with her wrongs.

"We do!" She all but yells. Spit accidentally leaves her mouth and ends up on her mother's grey coat and she watches her wipe them away with disgust before adding, "We do. I do! I do because I know my father inside out and I know him to be a cheat and a liar. He is a liar who got away with something he shouldn't have gotten away with and walked out of that courtroom as an innocent man."

"Don't say that-"

"No, I will say it. And you know what the worst part is? The worst part is that the two of you, so high and mighty, raised me to be just like that and every day... Every day I look at myself in the mirror and think how utterly full of crap I am, just like him. Now, I haven't been to church in yonks, but Lord Jesus fuck! Rewriting history, are we? Turning on the self-righteous tap?"

"Jemma-"

"Do you really want to lecture me, mama? You!" Jemma scoffs and exhales sharply, her breath cutting through the air. "Because you are so sorted, right? Christ. Thinking that you have nothing to do with any of this? Do you really believe him? Do you really think he never, not once in his life, abused his position?"

"Your judgement is clouded, you're clearly not thinking. All this anger..."

"Yes, all this anger! It's been there, always, and I don't know what to do with it! And maybe the two of you ruined my life, but I won't let him ruin the country."

"Where are you going?"

"Home," says Jemma, turning around. "Dinner is cancelled. You may dine on your own or not dine at all for all I care."

"Will I see you at the concert tonight?"

"You can ram your fucking concert up your shithole!"

"Jemma Anne Simmons!"

"I'll be there." She pauses, trying to blink the tears away. For a moment she considers telling her mother that perhaps she should have put as much care into raising her daughter than she put in her work. "I'm bringing someone with me. A plus one of sorts."

"Who?"

"No one of consequence."

"You should have said something... The seating has already been taken care of."

"Never mind that. It really doesn't matter."

"It isn't proper."

"Proper?" Jemma pauses, memories flooding her brain. "Neither is..."

"I can change the seating plan, one phone call."

"No, you won't do that! Or I shan't come. By God, I shan't come!"

"Are you trying to destroy whatever is going on? I will not allow you to do that in front of everyone."

"God forbid else!" 

The Simmons' amnesia again, never mind finding themselves on the winning side in 1066, they should have marked history with that. Looking away, without ever caring about what impact one's stories had on everyone around them. But let her father ruin a country in the same way he ruined her daughter, let her mother stand complacent and play the well familiar game, let her be his ally against the world, shielding herself from judgement by playing the victim. 

She mocks her mother's voice when she adds, "How long before you ruin it like every single thing in your life."

"I'm warning you-"

"Really, it doesn't matter. It's just someone who can make it all bearable."

She walks away without looking back, her heart pounding hard in her chest and the whole world around her reduced to a watery blur. Ancient wounds and half-forgotten memories surfacing again, the weight of the past unbearable, centuries of misery piled up on her shoulders, by God, how could anyone live with that? And she wonders why she, of all the people in her family, is the only one lacking the means to perform one single trick and repress everything, bury it deep inside without ever letting it bother her. Welcomed oblivion. A complete stranger even to herself. She gulps and wipes her nose on her sleeve, before pulling up her hood to shelter herself from the rain as she walks headed to the nearest Underground station, her oyster card already in her pocket.

Then, she momentarily stops under a gutter, watches the dust on her boots as she takes a couple of deep breaths and pulls out her phone to dial Fitz's number.

"Leopold James Fitz speaking," he says on the other end of the line, his voice almost enough to make her smile.

"It's Jemma. How do you feel about attending a charity concert?"

"Is that supposed to be a euphemism?"

"A euphemism?"

"You say something and mean something else. An innocuous word used in place of something else that may be offensive... etcetera."

"I know what a euphemism is, Fitz. No, I mean a proper concert. Mama is the one who organized it and she insists that I must be there. But if you were to come, then the two of us could have sex." She pauses. "They won't find out. The room mama keeps her things in can be locked from the inside. Will you be there?"

"I don't see why not, it's better than watching Eastenders."

"As for-"

"Yes! God, I want you, Jemma. I feel like I'm fifteen again, but-" He laughs loudly. "I'm heading home now and have to shower first. But if you text me the details I'll be there. I promise."

By the time he finally arrives at the venue he is late and the music coming from the auditorium fills the hall. Outside, the storm is now raging and the noise of the rain against the windows and door is like that of a typewriter - comforting and rhythmical. She watches Fitz step inside, attentively clean his shoes on the doormat before reaching her, his steps on the red carpet muffled.

"The architecture of this place is astonishing," he says as he wipes his glasses. "Not to mention the acoustics. I'm sorry I'm late."

"Never mind that. Come-"

She takes his hand and they walk up the old and consumed wooden stairs, each step is carved and creaks under their weight - an additional and unexpected sound to the music echoing in the hall and corridors, private and informal, completely unrehearsed. A wild and unplanned touch that suits life better than anything else. The one variable that remains uncontrolled.

"So it was a euphemism," jokes Fitz as she closes the door behind them. 

The room is small and crammed with stuff: a desk and a chair, a small wardrobe and a pile of shoes towering dangerously in a corner, and a mirror. For a moment she considers throwing everything onto the floor and ruin it, let her mother spend the rest of her week trying to sort out music sheets and putting them in the right order, but it feels too petty even for her and seems like a waste of time when they could just as easily get to the point.

"Better than sneaking away halfway through, more subtle. We just have to go back before they're done."

"I didn't know your mother had organized a concert. You didn't say-"

"Why on God's green earth would I do that?" She laughs. "It's something mama said and I thought, well, since we haven't seen each other for a while, I might as well ask you to come."

"But not for the music."

"Dreadful," she says, stepping closer to him. "Do you mind?"

"No."

"Hi."

"Hi." He grins against her lips as he fumbles with his coat. "I've been to Number 10, odd not seeing you there."

"The PM must be furious," she says and gives him a quick peck on the lips. Her actions linger as she moves her hand behind his neck, playing with his hair and holding him close. "Is this okay?"

"Yes, I want this. I want you." He gulps, his eyes wandering from hers to her lips and back up again. Over and over, before he finally leans in and touches her lips with the tip of his tongue, his hands moving gently under her jumper, up to her breasts, and then their tongues touching - moist and slippery muscle against moist and slippery muscle. 

"Good," she replies matter-of-factly as they part. "Me too."

"You know," he says, his hands skilfully opening the button of her jeans and then the zip. "Everyone's furious but for your father and those Americans that paid him. To be expected really."

"Excellent lawyer." She gasps. "Desk."

"Christ Jemma," he pauses, his features distorted as she presses her body against his, wrapping her legs around his waist, pulling him as close as possible. He kisses her neck - hot and open-mouthed, the feeling of his tongue on her skins sends shivers down her spine and she tries to find half a coherent thought in order to formulate a sensible reply.

"Your mother did the trick," he adds. "God, I'm too dressed for this."

"You are. Let me," she replies, fumbling with his belt and trousers. "She played her part rather well, I must say. Sitting there as a witness without makeup in her black suit, all stern and composed and every word painted with disbelief. Her husband? Never."

"Does she believe any of it? Fuck."

"Yes, that's the plan. I think she talked herself into believing him. She is not innocent, you know. People seldom are. God, I've missed this. Can you just-" She guides his hands. "Like that."

As Mozart's requiem reaches them - distant but getting louder and louder - Fitz starts with his careful ministrations. An attentive lover, delicate and gentle, looking at her differently, adoringly, with such an unsettling intensity that makes her feel raw and exposed as if he's ready to discover and reveal all of her secrets, strike some things away from the great compt. He kisses her again, sloppily, as his ministrations gain more purpose as she squirms under his touch and comes undone.

"Jemma are you alright?"

She opens her mouth in disbelief, trying to sort out her thoughts and her feelings. How to tell him that she is complicit in ruining a person's life? A solid case and her father came out victorious. How can she live with the guilt, knowing that she threw someone under the bus just to reach her own selfish goals? But this isn't it, this isn't them, and she won't allow herself to go further than this so she kisses him again, furiously, skilfully, trying to erase her life from existence, trying to get rid of the hatred at the pit of her stomach against her parents, the world, and herself - because maybe she is a terrible person and completely rotten, maybe she deserves all of it, she deserved to be full of shit and completely unfeeling, and she deserves to fuck the most proper person she knows while a bunch of elderly ladies is singing hymns and requiems, fully believing their words, fully believing the ancient doctrines.

He moans and the noise marks the ultimate transformation, ringing in her ears and arousing her further, making her bolder. Without thinking, she steps down from the desk, her hands accidentally touching his erection and he thrusts forward, grunting.

"What- What are you doing?" he asks, watching her as she kneels in front of him.

"What does it look like I'm going to do?" She asks, looking up at him. He looks ridiculous, standing there, and she wants to laugh again, but it feels risky lest it offends him. "I don't want to do anything that makes you feel uncomfortable."

"It's not that." He laughs. "It's... odd. I always thought it to be odd. Sucking someone off. You know, someone's dick in another's mouth as a concept is pretty... disgusting. In theory. I just want you to know that you don't have to do this. I'm perfectly happy to take care of this myself or take out the condoms from my rucksack and-"

She can imagine it, the all but seamless transition: take out the condoms, open one of the wrappers, put it on. Logistics again and some more talking until they probably realize that the floor is the most comfortable of all places and then they'd have to start all over again until he's on top of her and buried deep inside her. Too personal, though if they were to have proper intercourse, she'd probably ask him to just hold her for a little while longer as she allows herself to be vulnerable and get lost in the feeling of human contact, of Fitz inside of her, close on edge. She doesn't want to allow herself to care.

"You can't just say things like that, Fitz," she says flatly as she stands up. "Why do you always have to be so decent? Listen... Can I suck you off, Leopold James Fitz? It's been a while and we probably have to discuss the logistics, but I want to."

"If you're sure-"

"I am the one who asked, am I not?" She kisses him. "Now shut up, will you?"

After a while, from a long way off, Fitz cries out and as she is there, down on her knees, longing for something different and undefinable, for more, for Fitz's hands on her skin, feeling voracious, she thinks that maybe, maybe, lust is surprising itself into piety and she herself could whisper the words to  _ Kyrie Eleison _ , begging for mercy until there is no more mercy to beg for and no more forgiveness to be granted.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'd

Six o'clock sharp, the BBC news' theme fills the air of the small living room as Fitz grabs the remote, puts the television on mute and turns on the subtitles.

In the kitchen, one of the neon lights above the cooker keeps flickering; The bright and artificial light appears and disappears sporadically, diminishing in intensity before going out for just a couple of seconds, as Hunter moves around the kitchen as if it were his. With familiarity, he opens the cupboards and the fridge, takes out two bottles of beers and the bunch of take-away menus that hang on the magnetic board next to the window. He looks like a phantom presence, like a subnatural creature from one of those horror movies that air on E4 that he ends up watching when sleep refuses to come or receives a last-minute call from work, regarding matters that are always less important when spoken out loud.

Long gone are the days when the apartment used to be theirs and although Fitz rather enjoys the privacy and solitude that living alone provides, there is no denying that the time spent with Hunter as his flatmate used to be a riot: someone to talk to, someone to watch football with, someone to come home to. With all their jokes and the playful teasing, life never quiet.

"What do you want to have for dinner?"

"I don't know. Don't care," says Fitz. "You choose. You're the guest."

"Right. You should probably replace that," says Hunter.

Fitz looks up from his laptop, checks his phone, and looks at his friend. A surge of annoyance despite his friend's completely flat tone, a mere observation voices as though it were an item on some list of the weather forecast: something obvious, spoken as nothing but a fact.

"I know," he replies. "I've been meaning to replace it, but life got in the way. It's been quite the month."

"I can do it for you."

"No," says Fitz flatly. "You can, but you won't. I forbid it."

"Fitz, it's nothing but a kitchen light."

"Exactly. I can do it myself." He pauses, trying to get rid of the misplaced tediousness. He has been meaning to change that goddamn light for weeks and keeps forgetting, something else always coming up and limiting his free time which he'd rather not spend adjusting things that do not bother him to begin with. "Turn on the main light if it bothers you so much."

"I used to live here, you know?"

"Yeah, I know, but you're no longer living here which exempts you from these kinds of things. I'll fix it as soon as I have five minutes where I know that I won't receive a phone call or won't have to run to go to work, fix mistakes because someone said the wrong thing on television. again. Or because someone asked the wrong questions. Again."

"That bad, huh?"

"I mean, the entire country is witnessing this shit-show. It starts well, right? Then it degenerates. The next day it's on all newspapers, it's on the radio, on the mouth of every member of parliament and it spreads exponentially and there's nothing to be done about it."

"Old news." Hunter laughs as he closes a cabinet, a bag of crisps in his hands. "To be fair, Westminster isn't the only place you seem to run to nowadays."

Fitz ignores him, looking for something in one of the articles before highlighting a couple of sentences and adding a note. His fingers move swiftly over the keyboard and for a moment, the clicking is the only noise in the room as Hunter's words settle in the air between them. He knows what is coming next, there is only one way this conversation will end and it is something he'd rather not have. The most dreaded moment. Because language when talking about such things is nothing but a pile of garbage, slippery; because he'd rather not discuss his sex life with his oldest and dearest friend; because he himself has no idea how to start describing his romantic life or lack thereof without betraying himself, without looking like someone hopelessly carrying a torch and consequently make a tit out of himself.

"I'm talking about you and Jemma," adds Hunter matter-of-factly.

"Yeah, I figured," Fitz replies dismissively.

"Do you want to talk about what's going on?"

"No, I do not."

It's odd and unexpected even after all these years. They have hardly ever spoken about their respective relationships and whenever they did, it was usually Hunter who did most of the talking - about breaking up with Bobbi and getting back together with Bobbi, over and over again, insults turning into words of endearment and back into insults. Fitz had a couple of long-lasting relationships, one ended in mutual heartbreak and the other in boredom, but the thing with Jemma is different: it started differently and developed into something that he cannot quite define. It's sex, ridiculous animalistic lust and the inability to keep her hands off her, and that is safe, the only certainty as their lives and entanglement spin out of control.

It's sex - his cock and her cunt, if he's allowed to borrow her phrase - and he is surprisingly fine with it and most of the time he is able to tell himself that none of it matters, that he doesn't care, that it could end in a week and he'd never think about her again. Let them fuck while lives are falling apart or are being picked apart by the opposition; so what? Let them fuck while the country's future is decided on the roll of a dice, always stirring dangerously close to ruin. But sometimes, late at night or when he is holding her, climaxing inside her, it all feels like a lie: an intimidating force of nature, the centre of attention and he is drawn to her, consequentially being utterly and irredeemably fucked. He is going to get hurt because he doesn't have it in him to be the first one to walk away, not even now that sex with her feels familiar, lacking all of the illicitness and thrill it possessed in January.

"How are things at work?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"No, I'd rather know what on earth is going on between you and Jemma Simmons, but since you've decided not to talk about it... Listen, I'm just trying to do some small talk. How's Labour doing?"

"Ahead in the polls."

"The general election is on the horizon. It would be too much to hope for a landslide victory, wouldn't it?"

Fitz sighs and doesn't answer.

"Yeah, I thought so."

As does everyone. The polls are clear and Labour are ahead, but it means next to nothing because, in Fitz's personal experience, people will say one thing and do another - such is life, such are politics. The past four years and a half now feel like a holiday: a Labour government at last! Not the best and most definitely not the worst government the country ever had, but it starts reading as a joke and every day people become slightly more disillusioned. It's been a pleasant distraction, but there feels to be no way for it to last beyond the next General Election. The Tories are ready to retake power, the posh boys will be back as if Number 10 and Westminster were their rightful place as if they're ready to end this nightmare.

"A bunch of people are still claiming that they won't run, you'll have them change their minds in about a month."

"Like Simmons."

"Power dynamics inside their own party. It never seems to matter who's in charge as long as it's one of theirs, they'll vote them out and have someone else take their place." Fitz pauses. "I'm telling you, if Lord Simmons finds something to use as leverage, then we are all fucked."

"There's still time-"

"Exactly."

People won't come to their senses, of that Fitz is sure. From the very beginning, for as long as he can remember, the problem has been that most people in Westminster write their own headlines while doing anything and then don't have the cold blood to let all the insignificant provocations slide off them. Every article comes from a dish served ready, embellished and redelivered by the press: the story completely changed and reshaped into something new, but it doesn't matter as long as the people consume the final product and not the source. It's an endless cycle of falling into the trap, ask the wrong question, a shift of a stress or a cough taken for insincerity or lack of preparation, a badly formulated sentence is used by the opposition to play on fear so they spend their days trying to counter with the truth, trying to limit the damage done by something utterly ludicrous, but it retorts in itself and all they do is helping the opposition in repeating their words for the rest of the day. It's grenade after grenade. It's like guerrilla warfare.

Not to mention the image problem which no speech in the world will ever be able to fix. They'll do something completely natural and it will be reported as some fundamental piece of their propaganda - sitting on the floor to leave an empty seat for someone else, what next?

"I've got to finish this speech and I'm waiting for a phone call," says Fitz as Hunter enters the living room.

"Hear, hear. From Jemma?" He laughs.

"No, from work."

The atmosphere is horrid and everyone is fuming. Everyone is fighting each other and personal attacks are being made against the government because people are beginning to feel as though the parties aren't explicit about what they want to do next: they haven't changed their minds in forty years and God knows what they're thinking now. Forty-seven per cent of all Labour voters don't know which side their party actually supports, they clear the grid on a daily basis and the Prime Minister backs out again and again and again. Meanwhile, the opposition seems to be cutting through while spreading misinformation and lies, making empty promises or having them made by those who will not under any circumstance be forming a government. It's dangerously verging close to project fear and even those conservative parties who managed to be precise and clear-headed, the ones one could vaguely trust with taking over the country, are overlooked in favour of complete and total chaos.

"That bad, huh?"

"No one's listening. People think that they are being given a voice and they are being incited, but they'll stop caring. They won't be caring after the election as soon as those in charge get what they want. It's unsophisticated, uncivilized and worst of all, unkind. There's absolutely no sense of expertise or independent authority. All we do is feed a toxic culture where nobody can trust or believe anything, where nobody listens to each other. They just yell. The loudest and the rudest wins."

"But do tell me," says Hunter as he sits down on the couch and places two bottles of beer on the small table in front of them. "How does the thing with Jemma work? She just calls you whenever and you run to her house for a shag?"

"You're really not letting go of this, are you?"

"Nope."

"Don't say it like that."

"Say what?"

"That she calls and I run. It's mutual." Fitz pauses. Maybe Jemma is the one who calls the oftenest and maybe, maybe, as of late, he has been rather reluctant in picking up the phone and dial her number - too afraid to want something so viscerally, doubts and feelings making him feel dizzy; too afraid of accidentally blurring out a dinner invitation that would go against the silent and mutual agreement they have, that it's sex for sex sake because it's not terribly dreadful and awkward because the other's company is pleasant enough in the aftermath of it all. It seems oddly ironic that the whole thing started because of him. "You just make it sound wrong."

"And you make it sound as if you've got a fixed schedule. It sounds ridiculous. Wednesday, nine o'clock - as if you're on your way to play tennis. Do you write it down in your little calendar?"

Fitz laughs wholeheartedly. "Shut up, will you?"

The whole ordeal sounds strange when voiced by Hunter as if the truth were suddenly laid bare in its entirety and no amount of mental gymnastics could somehow embellish it further. He runs to her flat whenever she calls him, it's the simplest and only way to put it, and he doesn't really like the eagerness and the anticipation that her name on his screen usually provide - not so much for the sex itself, but to see her face again and hear her voice at the end of the day. He likes the sex, he doesn't regret asking her to have sex, he doesn't curse the day he accepted to repeat the thing and again and again, as days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months. It's March now and there is something addictive and strangely erotic about discussing work while getting undressed - brief and sporadic updates between one kiss and the next, as buttons and zips are undone, as clothes are ungallantly dropped on the floor, as they keel over - talking and giggling and aroused. Maybe she was right, maybe from the very beginning, they should have fucked as people discussed the best way to ruin the country.

But there is something else too, and deep down there is no denying that he likes those moments better than he likes the sex; lying there close to her in the aftermath, naked and in-between the sheets, their limbs tangled; when there's no rush to call for a taxi or drive home; when they fall asleep together and wake up with their bodies close, his arms around her waist. Out before breakfast, always, but the nights are spent together and he enjoys the peacefulness that they provide so much that it excuses the wriggling feeling that all of it is done just to get back at her parents. If she is, so be it, it's not like he is a reluctant and unwilling victim. He knows that sometimes it's just that and nothing more other than the physicality of it all, the blatant and direct insult that comes with fucking at inappropriate moments like at her mother's charity concert, locked in a room as a Requiem echoed around the building - fain and from far off.

"What?" asks Fitz as he notices that Hunter is staring at him.

"I never thought you to be that kind of person."

"That kind of person?" he asks bewildered. "Neither did I, really. It's altogether not too bad, I can see why people do it."

"Just... Try not to get hurt, mate."

He doesn't reply and looks at the TV screen, reads the subtitles of a newsreel on Britain's school system as if it were the most interesting thing on earth.

"Oh, Fitz, with your spaniel heart."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You should invite Jemma for dinner."

"Why? So you can get all the sordid details from her?"

"No, I don't give a fuck about the sordid details of your sex life. I was going to say that you should invite her to one of those where we are all there. She's friends with Bobbi so it's not like she doesn't know anyone other than you. We'll behave."

"What?"

"If it's not too second-rate for her."

"You know that it's my life, right? I'm an adult now."

"You know that I care about you, right? I simply don't want to see you get hurt."

"Yeah, I know. And I won't get hurt because there's nothing going on other than the obvious," he says, feeling oddly defensive about his life choices. There is no need to justify any of them: not to Hunter, not to Jemma, not to the world. Not even to himself. It happened once and it keeps happening, he enjoys himself while it keeps happening and doesn't mind the anonymity of it all too much. Why should it be a big deal when he's the one having casual sex when everyone else seems to do the same and unproblematically so?

Hunter shrugs and points at the television. "Still, talking about schools... Guess who my niece goes to school with."

"Who?"

"Lord Simmons' daughter."

"Jemma doesn't have any sisters, Hunter."

"Not the official daughter. The secret one."

"The secret what now?" Fitz almost chokes on his beer. "Isn't illegitimate the word you're looking for?"

"Illegitimate then."

"Have you been watching too much television?"

"No. There's a girl in my niece's class, she's Lord Simmons' daughter. Looks exactly like him."

"That's not proof enough, is it?"

"Alright, maybe not. People are talking, the girl wants to get in touch with her father. There must be a certain degree of loyalty because, well, clearly the press doesn't know about it and she's almost seventeen."

"Are they in touch?"

"I don't know. Maybe. Who can say?"

"Is there a way to find out?"

"I don't know. Find someone who knows and ask them, but you can hardly approach an MP and say 'excuse me, sir, is there any chance of you having an illegitimate child?'"

"What about the mother?"

"Cashier in a tourist shop." Hunter stops and looks at him. "I don't like that face."

"Does Jemma know?"

"I don't think so."

"I have to tell her."

"No. No, you don't have to tell her anything, Fitz. You don't owe her that and she's lived in perfect oblivion for seventeen years. It's not even her sister!"

"It is her sister."

"No, they just have the same father. Family's much more than that and you of all people should know that.

"Once. I'm going to tell her once and then it won't be mentioned ever again."

"You've lost your fucking mind! Fitz, that's just ammunition for Jemma in her private and insular war against her father. And you're the one handing it to her?"

"Lord Simmons walked free despite being guilty if it helps-"

Hunter shakes his head. "It won't. And you bloody well know that Jemma won't ignore it. This is Jemma Simmons we're talking about" She never stops. Arguably, she doesn't even know how to stop. And if she brings down a seventeen-year-old girl with her... You're not going to tell her because you're trying to be liked, are you?"

"Trying to be liked?"

"As in, you want her to like you."

"I don't give a shit about it!"

"Maybe so, but you know more than she does."

"No! You think I'm trying to impress Jemma? No!" He protests. "The thought hadn't even crossed my mind. But I do think that she deserves to-"

"She deserves nothing, Fitz. There is no entitlement, none!"

"She deserves to know about her sister."

"No, she really does not. You'll see her ruin everything. She'll ruin herself, that girl, and her father all in one go. It's like a ticking time bomb and she'll be the one to light the match out of righteousness and hatred."

"You don't know her, Hunter, she's not like that."

"Oh, because you do know her? Because the two of you shag every Wednesday night at nine o'clock, you know her ever so well?" Hunter exhales sharply. 

“Please, I finish working at nine o’clock,” he jokes, trying to relieve the situation, knowing perfectly well that it won’t work. “And Jemma finishes much later than that. Most of the time anyway.”

"Fitz, look me in the eyes and tell me that Jemma Simmons isn't exactly like that."

Fitz looks away and gulps, then, slowly, turns his head in order to meet Hunter's eyes. His words sound like a cruel lie when he says, "She isn't. She really isn't and you can't-"

"Can't what?"

"Nothing."

"Because I know her, alright? I know her of old. Jemma's not a bad person and she's fun, I'll give you that. But she is as unfeeling as she is selfish. We could spend a month arguing whether it's because of conditioning and class or whether it's done on purpose, but it's there. It's there and if there is something that can be used against her father, she will use it without thinking twice about the consequences of her own actions. She'll burn down the world if she has to."

"Then you shouldn't have told me!" Fitz yells, regretting his words as soon as they leave his mouth.

"I shouldn't have told you? Fitz, wake up! Just because you're having sex with her doesn't mean you owe her anything other than respect. She's not above any of us and you certainly don't owe her because she's posh. I swear to God, what kind of game are you playing at?"

"I'm not playing any game. Would you not want to know?"

"Would you want to know if that shithead you used to call father had some other kid running around? Don't you think it has to stop somewhere? That girl... she's not-"

"What?"

"She's nothing like Jemma. We're not talking about money and private schools, Fitz. We're talking struggling to make ends meet and social housing. Who do you think will come out victorious?" Hunter stops. "Jemma. It's always Jemma. Because she can be found snorting cocaine at the weekend, her lot can trash restaurants because they feel entitled to it, but that's privilege to you. Everyone thinks that people like her can make no mistakes. Tell me one instance in her fucking life where Jemma didn't use that to her own advantage, where she had to suffer the consequences of her own fucking actions."

"Stop it. Stop it!" Fitz gets up abruptly, hitting the table by accident. "You think that I don't know? Do you think that I didn't spend my entire fucking life trying to follow the rules only to feel like I'm still five steps behind? And that's just me, that's another kind of privilege. We know perfectly well how this country treats its-"

"Yes, we know." Hunter cuts him off. "Everyone knows. I'm warning you, Fitz, if this unleashes a media storm because of something Jemma does-"

"Playing all high and mighty, are you? Christ, Hunter, you can be such a-"

"Such a what? I dare you to finish that sentence."

Fitz's phone rings loudly. He picks it up, welcoming the expected distraction that cuts their argument short.

"I have to take this one. It's work," he says and leaves the room.

As he closes his bedroom door, he hears the noise of the entrance door slamming, but can't bring himself to care. He stands there in cold and righteous silence, filled with an addicting and mawkish sense of being in the right, with his phone still ringing. Then, standing close to the window, looking at Hunter storming out of the building and furiously walking down the street, he presses the green button and says, "Leopold Fitz speaking."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'd.

On the wooden dressing table, there's a vase: a distinctive piece, most likely from the early twentieth century as its style is too similar to the Art Nouveau for it to be an accident. Ruined and chipped, the colours on the porcelain faded by time and the entire thing is covered in veining. It's not as valuable as it used to be, one of the handles is missing, but it's the only piece of memorabilia that belongs entirely to her. As a rule, she tries not to keep anything that reminds her of her family or has any association with them, even though she spent a lot of time snitching her mother's finest china and taking it back to her place one piece at a time. But the vase, unlike so many other things in her parents' ancestral home, isn't a shrine to the past, to the family's history and glory, oozing nostalgia for something that was never quite there to begin with; It's a dreadful and ugly little thing, a reminder of happy summers spent with one of her great aunts, an extravagant and sarcastic old lady, famous for having had a swirling romance at age eighty-five with the old postman, himself a kind and funny little old man who always smelled of tobacco. Disliked by most of her relatives for being outspoken and refusing to include them in her will, for having said no to Englishness and having turned her back to a very specific kind of life, but not by Jemma herself. Even now, after almost twenty years, Jemma is still sure that her aunt was the best person she ever knew and the time spent with her is the highlights of her life: away from her parents; away from conditioning. A holiday from the lingering violence; the dreadful indifference; and herself. 

Summers of complete bliss where she learned that life-lessons didn't have to be taught through violence, that violence itself was rooted in cruelty rather than in love. Reading in the garden, walking around aimlessly, headed to the nearest farm to look at the pigs and the horses. Far enough from home to forget herself and life. Always back before dinner, in time to clean herself up and help lay the table. She also used to receive one pound and the permission to cycle to the village to get herself a ninety-nine even at a late hour, right before dinner, especially if she felt like it. That, perhaps, is one of the most vivid and fondest memories: receiving the nickel-brass coin, studying the engraving on the obverse and reading  _ dei gratia regina - fidei defensor _ , closing her palm around it before stuffing it into her pockets _. _

She remembers the kindness, quite surprisingly, highlighted by the horror of everyday life rather than being obliterated by it and never got to say it out loud and be thankful for it. One day, on a hot August afternoon, she broke the vase by accidentally flipping it over as she playfully chased the dog and for the first time in her life such an accident remained unmentioned and uncommented rather than being met with slamming doors and violence. No need to hide and wait for oblivion, hoping for the world to forget about her, hoping never to be found again.

I had an aunt once, she wants to say, whom I never said goodbye to. 

Sent to boarding school without any contact, without being told that her favourite person on earth passed away peacefully and quietly on a cold December night. Another strike that properly added to the great compt: in her dreams, Judgement Day came and demons swirled around her parents dragging them down into the most infernal abysses. 

I had an aunt once, she wants to say, the only person who treated me kindly. The only one who really seemed to care.

And she lied to her about many a thousand things and never got to see her again. Another strike, adding to the count. Perhaps she's the one who should be snatched by demons and fall for eternity. Both victim and perpetrator justly punished with eternal damnation.

The moment vanishes, slips away from her, fading with the urge to open up just once and make it about something else instead, make it about them, individuals with their fair share of personal history, rather than fleeting moments of ecstasy. It's appealing, the idea of blurting it all out in the most inappropriate moment of all, at her most vulnerable, the most exposed, perfectly fit for revealing secrets and grudges before being back in her clothes, holding back, shielding and evading, unknowable and misunderstood.

"Goodness," he says.

"I know." She laughs and leans forwards, Fitz still inside her, and pulls him in for another kiss - sloppy and languid, his hands in her hair pulling her closer - before climbing off him and lying down beside him. 

Their reflection in the mirror on the wall in front of the bed, between the wardrobe and the small shelf, reveals two people with flushed skin, lying naked in-between the sheets unmistakably stained with emission. Sweated and sticky skin. She watches Fitz carefully remove the condom, holding it above the duvet and then stopping there, as if frozen, not getting up to use the bathroom and derailing the process, no words spoken at all.

There is a bouquet of daffodils, contrasting tepals and coronas, white and yellow, fresh and smelling of spring. A dash of colour and a personal touch in the otherwise anonymous bedroom, a bit of country life in her city life, on this Mothering Sunday. Definitely better suited for her mother's living room as they were first bought for, but she's not driving or jumping on the first trail, as she would usually do, still too angry to sleep in her childhood bedroom; too angry to face her mother; too angry to apologize and do anything but sending a cold, short, and undeserved text of best wishes. 

"What?" asks Jemma, feeling Fitz's eyes on her. She pushes herself up on her elbows and turns her head around in order to look at him, and smiles. Still naked, something performative in her actions, allowing him to look. The only one. Feast your eyes.

"You make a funny face when you come," he replies before he bursts out laughing - a million noises and his whole body shaking. The sound itself is contagious, warm and welcoming, it softens the edges and gets rid of some of the post-coital awkwardness that never quite seems to leave them. In absence of words, the odd detention feels like the only obvious formal invitation to stay a little while longer. "Like this."

"That's not true!"

"Oh, it is." He pauses, his breath hot on her skin, and kisses her again, tenderness mixing with urgency. "You look adorable."

"Shut up, Fitz."

"Well, I rather like seeing it."

"At least there's that," she jokes. "Good thing you're the only one who gets to see it then. Gosh, I feel sticky."

Sweat and secretion. The smell of sex is unmistakable and fills her nostrils, poignant and acrid, mixing with the fresh air that comes in through the ajar window - not enough to properly cool the room and clear the air. There are motes of dust dancing in the bright midday light - mesmerizingly, tiresomely, and bewitchingly - and the whole space appears luminous, softer and welcoming. Different from usual. It likes them as much as they like it.

"I was supposed to see mama today," she says dismissively. "I'm glad that I didn't."

Dreadful afternoon tea and an even more tedious dinner. Treating each other snobbishly and with contempt. The worst scenario imaginable and she can imagine the coldness, the silent accusations and the violent silence as they sit there with their mouths shut and crammed with nasty criticism about the past, present, and future that shall never be voiced out loud. Drinking perhaps to self-destruction, the worst versions of themselves. A day spent with Fitz overall more enjoyable and entertaining.

"Feels like forever," says Fitz as he covers himself with the duvet.

He stretches his hand out to open the window even further and the noise coming from outside floods the room: the distant and faint sound of children playing in the small par at the end of the road, squealing and telling in utter delight as cars drive down the street. Children, she wants to say, with a reasonable chance of enjoying their lives. Perhaps there is some hope after all.

"It isn't," she replies. "God, I've missed this. I've missed you. It took us way too long."

"To have sex?"

"Hmm... You should have asked me sooner."

"When?"

"I don't know. At work. Send me an overtly formal email asking me whether I wanted to go back to yours after work. I dare say we would have had a riot and for a much longer time. You weren't dreadfully ugly, really."

"What's this?"

"I'm not blind, Fitz. You are good looking in an everyday kind of way. Something about you... Still, I'm glad we're doing this."

"As am I."

Fitz turns on his side and kisses her shoulder as he starts to run his fingers over her skin - from her cleavage, over her breasts, to her stomach: a distracting and familiar touch, fingertips dancing ever so lightly and effortlessly, no longer out of curiosity. As they lie there, legs entwined, she considers asking him whether he wants to stay for lunch or get out and get something like fish and chips. Let them tempt fate and risk it to be soggy and far too greasy, but let them do it together. 

"We should probably get up," she says instead. "I have to do the laundry. These sheets most definitely need a wash. And I need a shower or a bath."

"Jemma." He stops. "I don't want to upset you, but can I ask you a question?"

"Go on."

"I suppose... Did you tell the Prime Minister about your father? Only... One day I'm telling you about his daughter, the next he's being promoted to take care of-"

"Of course I told them."

"Didn't we specifically agree not to?" He sits up and grabs for his glasses, the used condom still in his hand. "We tell each other stuff and I remember saying explicitly that what is said in the bedroom stays in the bedroom."

"No, I can't say that I remember that part."

It rings familiar, but it feels more like a joke than a proper agreement, spoken between kisses as they keeled over the bed at some point in the past four months. They do discuss work and it comes up and out the following day or as soon as they are back in their clothes, humorous remarks on everyone's mouth. Secrecy has never been one of his top priorities, why would it suddenly be hers?

"I do wonder what this relationship means to you, Jemma."

"You don't want to see me anymore?" She asks, sitting up. The sheet that covers her falls down and she doesn't bother covering herself. It's ridiculous, she thinks, they are being and look ridiculous with Fitz still holding the used condom with uncertainty. It looks like the beginning rather than the end, though the hilarity of the situation doesn't escape her at all: let them end it in the same way it began - tainted by animalistic lust, talking about work and politics, misunderstanding and evading. She wants to laugh.

"God, no," says Fitz.

She looks at him, anger slowly rising inside of her. Familiar and welcomed, something to hold on to. A self-destructive and all-consuming force, misdirected, perhaps, but still there. She doesn't mind, she tells herself, he should simply walk away because she won't send him away herself: there is time for a proper conversation about everything, about them, even now as it slowly starts to come down at last. So let them step naked and flushed into something different, something serious and perilous, let them talk and be clear and perfectly honest about what they want and what they mean. Using words rather than their usual post-coital silence and imbecile colloquialism. 

"Are you trying to destroy your father's career?" 

"Me? Christ, no. He's going to do that all by himself."

"Don't you dare go to the press with this story, Jemma."

She looks at him completely flabbergasted, feeling like a stranger watching the scene from above, feeling nothing and no personal investment, compelled only by his apparent mental gymnastics. She says, laughing, "Go to the press? Good God! Why would I do that? I don't want my private life on the front page of every newspaper."

"This isn't about you, Jemma."

"About me?" She asks, her heart beating hard in her chest. Potential headlines come up in her mind, making her relive her entire childhood, and people eating it all up and spitting it out, criticizing, misunderstanding, lacking empathy, circling around the story like vultures. The mere idea makes her feel empty and vulnerable, a child again, row and exposed and laid bare, taken for a liar, blowing things up to epic proportions. "What on God's green earth are you talking about?"

"You tell me. I don't know anything about your life. I know nothing! We know nothing about each other because we don't talk, we never talk. We have sex. End of story."

"Do you have a problem with that?" she asks flatly.

"Do you?"

"No," she lies.

"And no," he replies coldly. She cannot tell whether he is being honest or not, part of her no longer cares, feeling indifferent.

He stands up abruptly, the whole mattress rocking under his weight and the bed springs squeaking at such a sudden movement. He stands there stark naked, his cock and balls floppy and sticky appendices, and the condom oscillating midair like a pendulum. She wants to laugh at him until her ribs hurt for looking so vulnerable and out of place, knowing nothing, feeling all high and mighty as if he never committed a dishonourable action in his entire life. How could anyone live with that and compare? 

She liked him better naked and inside of her, his mouth shut. The all but irresistible impulse to run wild and tell him just that, word for word, grows by the second. Let her lose control and regain it quickly, twisting her way out of it and ruining everything in the process as she picks it apart piece by piece, dissecting it with cruelty and clarity of judgement.

"What are you doing?" she asks as she grabs for her t-shirt.

"Getting dressed. I've got to use the loo."

"Let me dump that condom in the waste bin," she says, stretching her hand out. An excuse like any other to get up and leave the room.

"I can do that."

"I said, give it to me," she orders, words perfectly articulated. She snaps for it and he retrieves his hand. In the process, the sheath-shaped piece of latex falls on the floor. For a moment they both look at it. A laugh seems called for, neither of them musters it.

"Look what I've done," she says accusingly and gets up as Fitz leaves the room. Her feet land close to the condom and she kicks it, stomps on it in an attempt at destroying it. Dangerously close to her breaking point, the alluring feeling of self-destruction is thrilling and addictive. "We shouldn't have used one. Then this wouldn't have happened."

She silently mocks him, replaying all the steps that led to her unwrapping the condom and applying it with ease. If he had listened to her telling him that just this once they could skip it because she's on the pill, then it wouldn't have happened. He'd be out of the house already or on the loo. They'd be back in their clothes. Safe. Distant. In control. She hates him, but hates herself more and wants to destroy everything in close proximity, spare nothing and no one. Not even Fitz. 

There are tears pricking in her eyes and she blinks them away, holding the edge of the bedside table until her knuckles turn white. Then, slowly, she takes out a handkerchief and starts wiping the mess from the floor, thinking that if he wanted to use the condom so much, he should have made sure that she would end up with his emission on her wooden floorboard. It's his fault, all of it, the thought fixes itself in her mind, the only certainty.

In the kitchen, she puts the kettle on and washes her hands. The face reflected in the window is like that of a stranger, a person she once swore never to be again, and for the first time in months thoughts and memories wriggling in and dreams of peacefulness, a good cry, unspoken mutual comprehension. It used to be the whole time when she was little.

"Are you going to go?" she asks as Fitz reaches her, perfectly dressed and his rucksack in his hand.

"Do you want me to?" He pauses. "I just think that I owe someone one hell of an apology, that's all."

"I'm sorry," she says. "For-"

"Sorry? You're sorry?"

Jemma shrugs. "Didn't I just say? I'll take it back if you don't believe me."

"I don't."

"Then I'm not sorry at all. There, does it make you feel any better? Do your worst, Fitz."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"You can barely look at me." She knows that she is wrong, part of her anyway, that she is being irrational and stupid, that she could just flatly tell him the truth about what happened, about her sister and the meeting with the Prime Minister. Not about the past, for words are hardly appropriate and the moment even less so, but to make him understand that he's merely jumping to conclusions. But the need to be right is better, enhanced by her desire to be in control and centuries-old privilege. "Great. Splendid. I crossed a line, didn't I? I know."

"Oh, you know? You know?"

"Tea?" she asks stupidly as the kettle whistles. She takes out two cups from her cupboard and begins to pour in the boiling water, still waiting for an answer. It's an invitation to stay or the next best thing and if he does, if they can sit there in a kitchen, eating chocolate biscuits at lunchtime, then they can talk maturely and as a pair of adults, rationally clearing things up and listening, knowing that they have all the time in the world.

"Would you like some tea?" she asks again and thinks maybe he is one of those people who needs to hear stay in order to do so, but she won't be the one to speak first because if she does and he leaves anyway with wry and angry words, without knowing anything about her or what happened, then he won't think her an even worse person than she is.

"Tea? No."

"You know that you could give me the benefit of the doubt, right?" She says flatly. "But you don't trust me. You still don't trust me."

"Can you blame me?" He pauses. "I still don't know you."

"But you won't give it to me. The benefit of the doubt."

"No. Not today. Not for this." Fitz stops and looks himself around, out of the window and to the street. "I can excuse-"

"Excuse?"

"Alright, not excuse then. I know that half of the time we shagged because you were trying to get back at your parents. That's what you do. But it's on me, I could have said no and never did. Let's say that night at the concert, right, you invited me and asked me whether we wanted to have sex. Why? Because your mother was flippant to you, was she not? Christ, I'm stupid. I thought you had argued about not being in a relationship or never having a plus one."

"Flippant? I don't see how that's of any-"

"Your father had just walked out of that courtroom as an innocent man. You were angry, weren't you?"

"Like half the country."

"Yeah, but half the country didn't call me to have sex that night, did it? Half the country didn't suck me off at a fucking charity concert." 

She panics and feels dizzy as blood rushes through her veins and her heartbeat echoes in her ears. He makes it sound wrong, not the sex per se, but that night at the concert, different from how she remembers it to be. She desperately tries to recall the details for any sign or hint of Fitz doing or saying something to tell her that she stepped over a line. She remembers laughing and Fitz fingering her. She remembers him saying that she didn't have to blow him unless she felt like it and she remembers because it was decent, different, surprising. Not bad different, just different. Most wouldn't have questioned her willingness to kneel down and take their dick into her mouth.

Hesitantly and defensively, with history on her side, she says, "You wanted to! You said that you were enjoying yourself. And I asked because I always ask! You said so while getting undressed. You said so while you fucked me with your fingers as I was sitting on a bloody IKEA desk. You said so before I started sucking your dick and after you came into my fucking mouth."

"I did! Christ, I did! For three and a half months... But don't think I'm so stupid as not to have noticed that funny little pattern of yours. What's it this time? Mothering Sunday? You didn't want to call your mother and so you thought, well, I might as well have Fitz come around."

"No," she says. She wanted to see him because she enjoys his company. After all, he's one of the few people she knows that never really thought too badly of her, that didn't hate or resent her or dislike her. And maybe, after the discovery of having a sister, after having made the mental calculations and realized that perhaps, if seen from a certain perspective, it is her fault and she is terribly unlikable, she just wanted to spend some time with him. 

"That's not true," she adds.

"You're like a spoiled child, Jemma. Fucking rotten, rich and spoilt!"

"Spoiled?" She laughs, coldly, cruelly, full of edges, as she tries to ignore the latter accusations. It doesn't sound like her laugh at all, hollow and sterile. 

It's grenade after grenade, everything he has ever let slip is a double-edged sword to use to her advantage and she doesn't want to stop. Thoughts gather up in her mind, sentences perfectly articulated on the tip of her tongue, ready to be voiced out loud. It feels wrong, but the entitlement, the need to show him how far it all goes, feels bigger. It feels wrong, but the words itch and she needs to speak them out loud. Let her destroy all of it, take it down, bring it down with fake indifference, and send him away as long as she has the last word, wrong ones that are far away from what she wanted to tell him hours ago.

She goes on, "A child? Me? You don't know anything about it. You know nothing, Fitz! Nothing. 'Oh, Jemma, you're such a child. You're just trying to get back at your parents.' You're jealous, Fitz. You're fucking jealous and you wish you were me, don't you? Little Leopold James Fitz, Scottish and from a fucking island, who never stood a chance, always having to pay attention to what he does in order to be taken seriously. And Jemma Anne Simmons who used to snort cocaine at the weekend, fucking strangers in a nightclub, is now working for the bloody Prime Minister."

"Wait, what?" He pauses, looking at her in bewilderment. "Now that's just unfair."

She ignores him and continues to dig him well and truly up, epically, going in, with weeks-old anger overflowing and washing over in waves, taking no prisoners. She says, "Oh, you do like to complain, don't you? But you know - you know! - that no one is listening to you, that they're all humouring you. Fucking Great Britain, I mean, come on, they're just having a laugh at it. They're treating you condescendingly because you're no one, Fitz. They treat your lot condescendingly and you won't even admit that it's all there! I mean, bloody hell, wake up, will you? And there you are with your first from a third rate university and your bloody life that is so second rate in everything. You want to be me. Everyone wants to be me. All that fucking envy and resentment like sweat on your palms."

"I don't think there is anything left to say."

"There is, but I shan't tell you;" she says, calmly, her heart beating hard in her chest. His indifference palpable, her own fault of that she is aware, and yet, perhaps, somewhere, an alternative version of the two of them and her telling him everything about the girl she won't ever be able to call sister. "You won't hear it. Not from me. Not today. Not... ever," she says flatly. 

"Good. I don't want to."

"Jolly nice. If you don't have anything else to say..."

"No."

"Righto. Then I'd like you to go, you can see yourself out. You know the way."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'd.

Outside, the six o'clock traffic is slowly gathering up. The end of the working day and people on their way home, impatiently sitting in their cars, most likely drumming their fingers on the steering wheel, ready to speed as soon as the line of cars starts to move. A warm and sunny day at the beginning of May, the air smells of pollution and flowers, so typical of the city, the kind of day that foreshadows summer - the temperatures rising, incredibly hot for that time of year, leading people to single-handed comments about global warming and nods of agreement, the need to do something different if even at a household level, knowing perfectly well that try as they might it won't ever do much of a difference. In the country, no doubt, the thermometers on the game-larders will have reached sensational records, at any rate in England. The sun is still shining brightly, through the leaves of the trees that star the sidewalk, though, at the horizon, the sky is slowly starting to turn yellow, red, and orange, with lonely dark clouds that look as if they've been painted on a blank canvas by an attentive and hyper-realistic painter.

Fitz enters the building with quick and precise steps, loosening his tie as he walks up the stairs, headed to the first floor. His footsteps echo in the empty hall, the noise of heels on the granite steps, and his hand on the polished wooden handrail. A rather uneventful Wednesday, he tries not to think about the past four months when Wednesday nights were mostly spent with Jemma - having sex, trying to prolong the post-coital detention as much as possible, not wanting to go; the anticipation and the wait for a call, wry and careful words about timetables and locations: her flat, most of the time, the familiar car journey from Greenwich to London, through the empty streets, past the white terraced houses and the museums, some parks eerily illuminated by lampposts. His flat on those rare occasions when he finished working later than her.

He doesn't like thinking about it nor does he like the ease and habitual routine of looking at his phone, as if she were indeed to call him: for chat, to organize something, to hear his voice at the end of the day. He let her go, with some heartbreak, but there is a version of them - standing in a kitchen, in the destructive aftermath of their sexual intercourse, back in their clothes and defensive - that he cannot let go. Questions and no answers, the refusal to listen or talk, the entire situation running away from them leaving them lost and dismayed. He should have asked, later, why she had been so angry at him when he was sure, and still is sure, that he had done nothing to deserve or encourage her annoyance at him. What happened in the days between one meeting and the next? What happened and how did they manage to ruin things, in those fragile moments between ejaculation and improper colloquialism. He sees himself standing there in front of her, angry and confused, with the godforsaken condom in his hand, looking vulnerable and ridiculous, not quite knowing what to say and still unsure as to how much blame to put on her; and he sees Jemma in an empty kitchen making tea, cold and composed like she once had been on a cold and frigid January night, in an old t-shirt, the skin of her legs encrusted with secretion; and he thinks about the dirty bed linen, the destructive force wriggling in; winning them over; ruining things.

There must have been a moment, and in the sorry days and weeks that followed that dreadful, definiling and life altering Mothering Sunday, he tried to find it and pinpoint the beginning, perfectly balance when the situation could have gone either way before unravelling completely, taking the wrong direction. It's her fault, not all of it but some of it, but there is none of the entitlement or the mawkish sense of having been in the right. Looking back, he should have accepted that cup of tea which now feels more like a peace offer or one last chance to stay and talk things through. Caught by his own anger and sense of betrayal, he had overseen it, life changed forever and irrevocably so: no way to go back and fix things, too proud to contact her now and apologize, it would be like admitting defeat when her actions, when that breach of trust was still meaningful. And yet, they were both facing the consequences of their own actions and, worst of all, Hunter's smugness at the awareness of having been right, ongoing and unaltered, insufferable.

Now, a month later and still no scandal on any of the usual papers, but with a short and angry piece about Jemma and her father, he thinks that maybe too much time has passed and to contact her to say that he is sorry for the piece of news, that satiric paragraph about the past, will appear humorous and mocking, smug - Jemma Anne Simmons facing the consequences of her own actions after years of complete silence.

The door of the offices in the ministry of justice swings open, revealing an empty space. All cubicles empty and computers shut down, swivel chairs back in their place, pushed as close as possible to the desks, neatly. The afternoon glow shines through the Venetian blinds, the white walls now striped, gold and dark grey, making the place look less formal, more homelike in its appearance and features. In a corner, a pile of old newspapers placed in careful equilibrium on a box overflowing with waste paper, he passes by and throws his copy of London Line on it - his own part of the 9.5 tonnes of free newspapers Tube passengers discard daily.

"Ah, Fitz, I thought you had gone home," says Radcliffe from the doorway of his office. "Didn't I tell you that you could?"

"Yes, you did. I still have some work to do and I'd rather work in my office than in the kitchen at home." He pauses. "I thought I'd be the only one."

"No, some last-minute phone calls to take care of. But do come in, take a seat. We haven't talked in a while, have we?"

"No. Thank you, sir," he says as he follows Radcliffe into his office.

"You can drop the formalities now that we are alone. Am I not like a father to you?"

Fitz laughs as he sits down. "I'm sorry, I'm afraid it has become a bit of a habit. Mother sends her best wishes."

"You went home, didn't you?"

"For Easter, yes."

"Right. And how is she?"

"Well. Rather busy. Lewis is the same as always, of course." He pauses and takes the last bite off his apple, cleaning the corners of his mouth with a napkin. "If this is about that speech, I'll have it ready within the hour."

"Thank you, Fitz." Radcliffe stops to type a couple of sentences, the noise of his fingers clicking the letters on his keyboard fill the room. "Between the two of us, what do you think of Lord Simmons?"

"Did he decide whether or not he would run?"

"No, not yet. He says that he won't, but John stepped down and they are one man short. Something to do with that email-"

"I know, I am the one who drafted it," replies Fitz, trying to sound impassive and detached. "It was his private account, but I remember... An act of kindness, that sort of thing. I would have asked, but you were away that week-"

"Yes, I remember you mentioning it. Odd to work for the opposition."

"I could hardly say no. It wasn't planned."

"No. Fitz, I must ask, did you leak it?"

"Of course not!" Fitz protests insincerely and looks away, out of the window. The accusations he directed at Jemma ring in his ears, make his heart beat faster, fuelling his guilt. Those harsh and angry words, going to the press and crossing lines when he himself did the same not a week later. "I would have to be completely insane to do so."

"Insane? Yes. Not unheard of though. One does what one can and with things as they are it must feel rather tempting to-"

"Tempting? Yes. Doing so would be irresponsible."

"You know that if they ask me, I'll have to give them an answer. I'm on your side, Fitz. Hell, I would have handed that email to the press myself had I had the chance to do so. But if there's anything-"

Fitz shrugs. "It could have been a mistake. People did deserve to know."

"We can agree on that."

"Must have been luck."

"Luck. Yes, maybe. Still, I think it's Simmons we have to worry about."

"Ah." He pauses. "What's the issue with his daughter?"

"Jemma? I thought the two of you were friends. I've seen you together a couple of times, talking. Didn't she call you a once or twice?"

"Work," replies Fitz dismissively. "Nothing much at all. Our paths crossed briefly, haven't really talked to her in months."

And he has been avoiding her at all cost, always trying not to be in the same place as her so as not to be forced to meet her and see her again, find a couple of words that won't sound flippant or wry, no colloquialism turning into yet another accusation, making things worse. He doesn't trust himself and he doesn't trust her and if they weren't even friends to begin with, God knows what she must be thinking of him now.

"Interesting. So why are you asking about her?"

"I, ehm, I've seen the piece in the newspaper. It's been what? Ten years? I thought that these things stayed dead."

"So you are on her side?" asks Radcliffe with genuine curiosity.

Fitz does his best not to look away and yet the inquisitive glance proves hard to evade. The urge to talk about his private life with someone other than Hunter and the awareness that despite having known Radcliffe his entire life, the man he once saw as a father is now his superior and he stout-heartedly refuses to open up about his personal life as long as he works for him. He no longer is the shy boy sitting in the kitchen of one of his parents' oldest friends, talking about his friends and his hobbies on those long afternoons of his parents' divorce, escaping the misery and the rows and his father's insults. It's been years and there is no point in opening up and asking for advice, dragging even more people into whatever morass he and Jemma created.

"I'm on no one's side," Fitz says at last. "But this was done to her, not to her father."

"No, I suppose you are right."

"And it's not like Lord Simmons is innocent, no matter what was decided back in February." He pauses. "And, I mean, if one were to look at his university career, God knows what one would find out."

"Do you believe it?"

"That he took a large sum of money to give a speech across the pond? Who doesn't?"

"The jury," replies Radcliffe. "Because of Lady Simmons probably. No, I mean the story with the pig."

"Probably not. Who knows."

"No. Idle gossip, but sometimes gossip has some truth in it." Radcliffe sighs. "But God knows what goes on in those exclusive clubs, people used to be a lot shier about condemning these things. And money, of course... Some stories, as absurd as they sound, feel rather true."

Fitz laughs again.

"Would you like anything? Something to drink? I think Aida keeps some biscuits in her drawer..."

"No, I'm alright, thank you."

"Well then, back to that other matter, Fitz. When Jemma Simmons was at university, following her father's path, I dare say, she ended up on the front pages of every newspaper."

"Yes, for snorting cocaine. I remember."

"Lord Simmons tried to excuse her by saying that these things are an integral part of the university experience, that his daughter was young and naive." Radcliffe stops. "He was playing the 'leader of the people' card. Ridiculous given his status."

"Possibly, but people seem to be oddly fascinated by those who never had to work in their life."

"Still, you can imagine the backlash that his remarks caused. People got angry."

"People?"

"The people, not the ones in his own political party. It isn't the university experience, but I suppose that you know that better than me."

"Yes. I mean, it really isn't. I'm not saying that it cannot happen, but highly doubt that every single person who ever enrolled partied that much in nightclubs."

"People said that as much as Simmons claimed to be on their side, he still believed that some rules didn't apply to his lot and certainly not to his daughter. I think he blamed Jemma for the outcome of that general election, but this is merely speculation, you must take it with a pinch of salt."

"So she really never faced the consequences?"

It's odd for someone who keeps bringing the thing up at every occasion, or understandable as if she is holding it against herself, making herself face the consequences by ruining all of her relationships, by making people actively hate her for her own privilege. As if she cannot and will not forget.

"No, but for her father's anger of course. But their relationship was already strained and that is to be kind. The world moved on and it was forgotten, something new and more interesting than a politician's daughter snorting cocaine and having fun. I don't think it came up when she started working here, but people do forgive and forget." He takes a sip of tea and clears his throat. "In her defence, she was rather young and if I had Simmons as my father, I'd probably end up doing the same. Or drink myself to destruction."

"I mean, everyone's got issues with their parents. They fuck you up. They may not mean to but they do. Larkin."

"The question, Fitz, is whether they really do not mean to. Lord Simmons's a dreadful chap and he used to be worse."

"Worse?"

Fitz stares at Radcliffe, trying to imagine how it used to be. He thinks of Lord Simmons walking out of that courtroom, the smugness and entitlement, his promise to the country and the idea of a new kind of politics - uncivil and unkind. He thinks of the stories and Jemma's hatred for him, and the secret daughter. The way that man carries himself, reshaping the world around his will in a way so similar to how Jemma carries herself, words irrevocably altering reality, manipulating and pitying, attracting people's attention. Bright stars and everyone else considering themselves blessed to be in their spheres, far acquaintances. Glitter and glamour, dazzling and alluring, distorting the entire world, attracting attention. 

"Hard to imagine, I know."

"Yeah, pretty much. Did you ever- Back in the day?"

"A couple of times, some party or the other. Simmons wanted to impress everyone and his wife, well, she deals with these things. Bloody miserable people if you ask me. The whole place, they always seemed scared of it as much as it was scared of them. You could cut the air with a knife, the tension between them. I don't think- anyone would have guessed, I suppose. Some families are like that, but it must have been... Jemma must have been ten, yes, I don't think I've ever seen a more miserable child and I was looking after you. Sent to bed and then-"

Radcliffe looks away and then writes something down on a piece of paper and hangs it on his computer screen, a yellow post-it that looks terribly out of place. His evasiveness is curious, unfinished sentences adding up and never quite revealing the full picture. Second-hand reports of a childhood like pieces of a puzzle that don't quite fit together. after all these years. He thinks about Jemma's reactions to his accusations of immaturity. He wants to know more from Radcliffe, from anyone who met Jemma in her life, from Bobbi, from Jemma herself until there are no more questions and no more answers. The most miserable child, and his own childhood was far from golden. He thinks of Hunter's words about Alistair, the afternoons spent in Hunter's kitchen just not to go home, the days spent with Radcliffe and his father's words cutting deep. What kind of childhood is Radcliffe talking about?

His evasiveness merely fuels Fitz's interest as Radcliffe's voice betrays him as if he's trying to push memories aside and hold himself from telling the truth of what really happened at a party almost twenty years earlier. Two different versions of Radcliffe, a new one wriggling in.

He says, "Incredible, the things one ends up remembering. One hell of an evening."

"Really?" asks Fitz dismissively and encouragingly, hoping that the underlying worry and guilt he seems to perceive won't be dismissed with nonchalance, for old times' sake. It's wrong, he tells himself. Gossip. Radcliffe has no right to tell him anything and how he would feel if someone were to talk about his childhood and Alistair Fitz with a third party with no direct connection to him. He wants to know even though they had nothing but sex. He wants to know and maybe feel guilty enough to call her and apologize and clear things up.

"Nevertheless..." Radcliffe coughs. "Back to that email-"

"I don't think that there's much to be said about it. He said that he wouldn't support them, he said so publicly at every occasion and then wrote otherwise in an email. Serves him well if you ask me."

"It does and yet one cannot help but wonder."

"Well, I didn't have anything to do with it. Someone must have made a mistake. He may have made one himself, never mind what people say about his lot."

"Justice served in the end."

"Doesn't it always?" asks Fitz.

"The classics seem to say so." Radcliffe signs a piece of paper and looks up again. "As the minister of justice, I am making a rather ruddy job. I wouldn't be so sure about the triumph justice, Fitz. The world seems to be much more complicated than that. I say, did you hear any rumours about Simmons' daughter?"

"Daughter? Not Jemma I suppose."

"No, the illegitimate one."

"A couple of things. That she's not like them."

"No, apparently her mother works in a tourist shop of all places."

"So they say. The girl must be eighteen or something."

"Good heavens. Private lives catching up, eh? That sort of thing. To think that Simmons married for money. Unofficially and between the two of us, that may be used against him. Un-English if played right."

The destruction of family values though there doesn't seem to be anyone in the entirety of Westminster with a life more complicated and embarrassing than the Simmons put together. An illegitimate daughter doesn't change much, he sees that now, it hardly matters in the great scheme of things because Lord Simmons long stopped playing the game from that angle.

"Of course, it would be bloody useless coming from us. One may say that we are the ones who are un-English."

"Yes," says Fitz monotonically, writing it down in his notes. "Of course they would say that."

"It's gotten worse as of late."

"Can't say I noticed."

Jemma's insinuations back in January and later in April made him paranoid about how his own attitude comes off, the way people might read him or interpret his words. He thought she had done it on purpose at first, trying to say something that could somehow make him burst out of his glass cabinet. It's not that he never saw it there, it's that he willfully chose to ignore it and waste his time on it.

"A daughter, who'd have thought. But it's mostly gossip at this stage."

"Yes, I figured," says Fitz impassively. He looks outside, the London streets are stuffed with traffic, cars barely moving. Thinking of Hunter and Jemma. "Is there evidence?"

"Who can say. Someone talked, there's a DNA test apparently, but I can't tell anything else as I myself am in complete oblivion when it comes to the matter."

"That man seems to have the most incomprehensible private life, it's going to be a rope against his neck as he tries to untangle it."

"Have you met them?"

"The Simmons? His wife, very briefly. Some charity concert back in February."

"Didn't know you were interested in that sort of thing. Fancy we didn't meet."

"Yes. Quite odd." Fitz pauses. "And the daughter of course. They're exactly as one would expect them to be, everything they do has posh written all over it. That is not to say that Lady Simmons isn't talented or good at what she does, but there's something about it, doing it in one's spare time."

Radcliffe laughs. "You don't like their lot that much, do you?"

"Do you?" asks Fitz.

"No, of course not."

"It's not personal, but one has to be aware of privilege. And money, of course."

"Ah, the real master of this country. Everyone can agree on what it means, it creates whole troops of infantry."

"They don't seem to worry about being taken seriously and even if they aren't, lies and people believe them. Let's say they say something that can easily be disputed, something obvious, something completely irrational... Mother's milk to them. Humour me for a minute."

"Alright."

"They get into some exclusive university, never mind that the top two-"

"Oxbridge."

"Yes, they're no longer the top two universities in the country. That is already an advantage because the job market is fucked. Not a first, let's say a third. A gentleman's third, but a third nonetheless. They party more than they should, I guess Simmons' daughter is a fair example even though she concluded with a-"

"First."

"First. The parents may feel a hint of disappointment, but it doesn't matter. Exclusive clubs. Meanwhile, mugs all over the country go to a second rate university, finish their studies in a haze of misery without any good time for paltry, and get a first. Under-qualified. Neither gets jobs, right? But then someone calls pater and he fixes it while everyone else cries in their gin because despite the effort and the grades they don't manage to find anything that is even remotely worthy of their brilliance." He pauses. "Sometimes they need you to have a degree to work as a cashier, that's what I'm saying, but you don't see any of them doing that."

"Why, Fitz, you're something of a reversed snob. "Who'd have thought, after all these years," says Radcliffe, but there's an unmistakable note of pride in his voice and his voice remains soft and fond.

Fitz smiles.

"And you really think you could somehow work for them."

"Time will tell," Fitz says honestly. "But if I do, well, let's call it damage control."

"It won't be like writing an email once and then forget about it."

"You don't think I have it in me, do you?"

"No, I do. Perhaps that's the real problem after all, Fitz."

"The real problem?" he asks.

"Are they going to like you enough to trust you? You know how it is."

"Can't say I do." He pauses and smirks. "Who wouldn't like me, Radcliffe?”

Radcliffe laughs.

“It's almost done and if they don't win, I can always step back."

"Fitz, may I tell you something? Like in the old days."

"Sure. Go on then."

"It's not worth it, but if you want to try and feel like you could do it, then you have my support. You always had and always will have, nothing could change it."

"Well, it's not official yet. It's just talking."

"No."

"We'll see."


	6. Chapter 6

"And how are things with Fitz? Last time I saw you it seemed that you two were doing great, all over each other and so on," says Bobbi. Her voice is interrupted by static noises as the line risks to fall while Jemma walks towards the other side of the coffee shop, headed to the tables close to the window that faces the street. 

"You haven't spoken about him at all," Bobbi goes on as Jemma sits down, carefully placing her cup of tea on the small table. 

"Nonexistent," she replies. "That is, we're no longer seeing each other or on speaking terms. Might be for the best, actually."

"Define speaking, Jemma."

"Alright, we never had brilliant conversations." Jemma laughs. "But I'm no longer calling him every Wednesday or Saturday to come to my place in order to... you know."

"Shag your brains out."

"Yeah, that. No need to say it out loud."

"Am I being crass?"

"No, you're being you and I'm being me. I just thought, well, at some point I thought that there could be more than sex but I messed things up and I sure as hell won't apologize." She pauses and pours a splash of milk into her cup, stirring it, observing the clouds of milk slowly disappearing and the tea turning beige. "It's fine, certainly not the end of the world. Fitz was pretty clear that he didn't want to see me again or hear what I had to say in my defence, so I won't run after him in tears, yelling, begging him to hear me out. I'm not that kind of person. In fact, I don't know what kind of person I am, but I don't want him to win this round. I didn't do anything wrong regardless of what he thinks of me."

"Jemma, what did you do?"

"Nothing. It involves papa and the Prime Minister and I am, was, right. That's all you need to know other than I am doing an excellent job at trying to avoid him and the fact that the two of us, that is me and Fitz, won't speak any time soon. I don't want to and I told him. Not now, not ever. He said he didn't want to listen so everyone wins and no one's ruddy miserable, moping through their days. What's done is done."

It's only half a lie because she's not being ruddy miserable, but sometimes she thinks about picking up the phone and call him, not to ask him to have sex but to talk. Dinner somewhere or a quick coffee in an anonymous place that bears no connection to either of them, where they can meet as two strangers with no real baggage of their own, blend in, and she can explain to him everything matter-of-factly as if she were describing the life of a stranger, the plot of some book. But every time that she starts dialling his number or tapping a message, she thinks about his face and reluctance, the complete lack of understanding and changes her mind.

"See," she says. "If I wanted to be judged, I'd spend more time with my mama. Or papa. And I call that a bloody nightmare."

Bobbi laughs loudly into the speaker. "You're impossible, Jemma."

"I'm a delight."

"Right."

She folds the newspaper she's holding in her hands. An angry and satirical piece of writing she memorized at breakfast is in front of her, black letters on white paper, followed by a drawing of her face. Jemma feels the urge to draw a moustache on it or deface in any other way so as to hide her features, distort it into something monstrous, making it distinct from her, shielding herself from the memories in the process. She asks, "What are you doing anyway?"

"I've got a job lined up after lunch. Getting ready. Might meet Hunter tonight for dinner and sex. Why?"

"Did you see today's newspaper?"

"Can't say that I did." Bobbi pauses as Jemma sighs. "You sound relieved."

"I'm just trying to figure out how many people in England read it. I may have to move in with Milton and his husband, I'm sure they won't mind. I mean, Milton works in Sainsbury so he can't care that much about these things. Papa wouldn't dare go to their place and I'd be safe from his wrath."

"Jemma, what's going on?"

"He's going to be furious, Bobbi. Oh, there's something about me on the paper, but it's ancient news. University. Oh, you do know what happened so I shan't explain it, which suits me well because I don't want to talk about it at all. It happened alright. I used to snort cocaine every now and then. I thought people had forgotten, always something more interesting to talk about. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Invent time travel and tell myself that there are other ways? I'm angry at myself really so I thought, well, I might as well speak with papa."

"So you did try?"

"Well, yes, but that shithead wasn't there. I went to his flat, all cleaned up as he likes it, following all self-imposed standards I could come up with and he wasn't there. Ha! Bobbi, nothing was there. The flat was empty."

"Empty?"

"Yes, empty."

One of those white terraced houses. It had taken her a while to find the keys, only to find them behind the small cabinet in the hall, time enough to come up with a fake little speech, evasive enough to sound real and sincere, with some fake details thrown in about how much she regrets having done something to him, how unrelated it was from their personal diatribe, nothing to do with what happened when she was ten and its aftermath. She was simply partying too much: alcohol, drugs, sex with strangers in dirty bathroom stalls - ready to give honest details about blurry times, the haze, the softened edges, her thoughts nothing but a distant memory, belonging to someone else. A person with no past and no future with someone's hands on her, lifting her skirt, pulling down her panties. Mostly Milton, that would probably infuriate her father even further. Or one of the girls she used to go to class with. So out of Tube, up the stairs, down the road with lonely cars driving by and the occasional person walking their dog. Key in the keyhole, rattling, only to step in and find an empty corridor with dust gathering on the floor and a pile of old newspapers in one corner, their pages already yellowing.

"Jemma, are you still there?"

"At the flat? No."

"No, I meant on the phone. So, what next?"

"It seems unlikely that he's moving back in with mama and I think he'd have told her if he had gotten a new place. She'd have told me, I think. You know how she can be with the money thing, always reassuring me that something will be left for me to inherit. Perhaps she should ask herself if I want to inherit something, it would feel too much like compensation for my troubles. Oh, do you know that they call it that?" Jemma laughs. "Still, I don't know if I really want to speak to papa, then I'd have to tell him that I met her. He'll blame me, I'll blame him."

She closes the newspaper and shoves it in her bag before she takes a sip of her tea. Outside, people are rushing in and out of the train station, some of them are carrying colourful suitcases, their wheels spinning on the pavement, and talking to the people next to them - happily and carefree, excitedly perhaps.

"Your sister? You've met her and you didn't tell me?"

"There isn't much to say, Bobbi."

"How did it go?"

"Can I say something mean?"

"Go on then."

"I think she's jealous, proper jealous, which makes no sense. We clashed almost immediately which, fine, we're a pair of strangers and she's much younger than me. And, well, truth be told, she didn't live my life, did she? Like, I understand that it must have been hard making ends meet, but her mother seemed to care. Now, that's something you can't say about papa!"

"Jemma-"

"No, don't Jemma me. Don't you dare say that either of them cared, that's not true."

"No, they didn't care."

"No, because they would have realized that no one should do that to anybody else. Especially papa. They just sent me to boarding school."

"I was going to say that you aren't completely alone in the world. Not that it makes it better."

"It doesn't, but I know and I do appreciate the sentiment. She's a kid, Bobbi, and she wants a father. I get that, but not him. Why does it have to be him? Why would anyone want papa in their life? That's the only question, the only reason I showed up. I still don't get it, none of her arguments were persuasive and I couldn't just tell her everything. I didn't even tell Fitz! and I liked him, Bobbi, I genuinely liked him."

She takes a sip of tea and looks away, collecting her thoughts and mourning her childhood self. It's hard to wrap her head around someone's wish to get closer to their father, it bears the same odd connotations of hearing people talking positively about their parents or grandparents, unaware of what it means to be living with ghosts, a phantom life influenced by the ghosts and the pasts of their own relatives.

Jemma says, "Can you believe it? I stopped wishing to have a sister when I was, what, five? Six? By the age of ten, I'd rather jump from a bridge than knowing that someone else could be subjected to- you know. Well, that. Whatever that was and means. And now someone's willing to be dragged into this shit-show. How they came up with that idea is truly beyond me."

Bobbi laughs. "How is she?"

"I was going to say that she's the sanest person in my family but, you know, I've changed my mind. Listen, I did tell her the same thing. Flatly."

"Jemma!"

"I did. I said I have no intention of having a sister. She can stay with papa and whatnot but I do not want to see her ever again," she says.

What's the point anyways? She made that up the moment the girl started talking about a childhood, painted as less than idyllic but more idyllic than her own. And for the first time in years, she had been jealous, furiously so, voracious for something she was never allowed to have. Money struggles and loans and schools that didn't breed future queens or whatever is now printed on pamphlets, but schools that never made it into any kind of list. And as they sat there, two strangers having lunch in a place in the outskirts of London, with overprized food that no doubt had been chosen on purpose just to try it out once on someone else's expenses, she had thought that she'd have endured everything if it meant one golden memory instead of living with a series of blanks and half fazed moments of a life.

"How can I want a sister when I hardly want my parents?" She goes on. "Gosh, I wish I were an orphan at last. I'm telling you, the day won't come soon enough. At least granny and grandpapa are already six feet under, thank God for that. There won't be any peace etcetera and now another one of us comes up. Dreadful news. I liked us better when we were going extinct."

And everyone else, the entire world, her friends included, like visitors in a museum: looking studying, observing a species rotting away behind a glass cabinet. Perfectly preserved and no longer alive, in their finest clothes and the most ceremonial epitaphs that don't even begin to scratch the surface. Stoic demure, typical of that peculiar mix of position and money, that even death couldn't cancel and all the lies and secrets, the suffering, the violence behind closed doors, safely treasured by corpses serving as vaults. 

"Jemma, are you still there?"

"Yes. I was thinking about-" She pauses, trying to push away the memories of her grandfather, his dignity up until the very end when he was nothing but a shouting and terrified old man, no longer larger than life. "Of course, she's not to be blamed. I mean, she isn't the one who chose papa did she? She didn't have a say in it just as I didn't have a say in it. And yet, here we are, it might have brought us closer but it didn't. It won't. You cannot choose your parents and, in her defence, she doesn't know anything about papa. She never had to suffer through his stories while suffering the exact same pain. She met him once and thinks that she has him figured out already. Well, bad luck! She doesn't know him and soon will."

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing. I don't mean anything by it, it's me being silly. He would never- Oh, you know him, he's indifferent, but people can be used in other ways and he'll use her to further his political career because it didn't work with me. She'll let him because she wants a father and I don't care because it's up to her. I hope she makes him miserable. I hope she fucks it all up and colossally so because he doesn't deserve another child, he doesn't deserve a second chance as if it were to even out the first one." She pauses, finishing her tea. "And I hope that while he's with her whether it's for lunch or dinner or a holiday... I hope that he'll think of me at age ten, scared out of my wits, telling the truth only to have my parents send me to fucking boarding school of all places. Oh, he'll look at her and he'll remember how he didn't raise a fucking finger while I was- Wait, I've got to get out of this place."

She pushes her chair back and collets her thing, throws her disposable cup into the bin, and storms outside, the door all but slamming behind her. Angrily, she wipes the tears from her eyes and waits for the world to come back into focus, no longer watery, all forms and people perfectly visible in all the details.

"I wasn't going to make a fool of myself inside of Costa, Bobbi."

"Are you alright?"

"Is anyone ever?" She pauses. "Is anyone ever truly well? or alright as you call it. I think not and yet- I wish I was living someone else's life. Still, I think I might try at papa's office and start a row with him. I'm allowed, it's the only entitlement I have, it'll make it better."

"And then? Do you want to see each other for a drink? Or you can come to my place and we can have dinner, watch a movie, you don't have to talk." Bobbi stops. "I was supposed... Never mind, I'll throw Hunter out and he'll go to Fitz's place and sleep on the sofa."

"No, it's fine. I promised mama that I'd come up for a weekend," she lies. It's half a lie because she did promise her mother but never set a date. She should feel bad but doesn't. She goes on, "I think it's bloody well time we organized a family reunion, don't you think? I'll invite papa personally and then we'll see. Oh, we'll see alright."

"Call me if you need someone's voice on the phone or a lift back. Or someone to drive up to keep you company."

"Of course." Jemma pauses. "Bobbi?"

"Yes?"

"You know that I love you, right? After all these years... If I need something, anything, you're always and will always be the first person I call."

"I know, Jemma. Just- Don't make it sound like a goodbye."

"It isn't. I just feel, well, like I dump half of my problems on you. Always did that."

"No worries, you can come to the party next month to make up for it."

"Will Fitz be there?"

"I don't know but if he is, you'll be able to avoid him."

"Alright." For a moment she considers asking whether or not he's seeing someone else but doesn't. The thought of her asking Bobbi is rather pathetic, no matter how much she wants to know. For closure and peace. If he was seeing someone, she'd wish him all the best and would force herself to stop thinking about him and that dreadful Mothering Sunday. "I thought you'd only throw the party if the thing with Hunter lasts."

"Oh, it will last, trust me. We made up alright... If you know what I mean. He's-"

"Ewww, yes. Too much information." Jemma laughs. "I don't want to think of you and Hunter that way, there's something oddly voyeuristic about it. I'll be there."

"Don't do anything stupid, Jemma?"

"Please, Bobbi, who do you think you're talking to?"

"Exactly. Just- It'll sort itself out."

"Oh, I don't know. It will end eventually, one way or the other. It might take years, but- By God, I'll make their lives a living hell. Thank you, Bobbi. For everything."

"Any time."

She hangs up and puts her phone into her pocket, making her way to the nearest Tube station. It takes half an hour to reach her father's office and for the entire time, she wonders whether people are staring at her because they remember her face from a decade ago or it's her imagination and guilt playing tricks on her. It's an uneventful trip in a half-empty carriage that shakes and moves swiftly underground, silence interrupted by the announcement of each station and the reminder to mind the gap between the train and the platform.

"Miss Simmons, Jemma! Haven't seen you around in a while," asks her father's secretary. 

"I'm here to talk to him, I don't have an appointment." Jemma looks herself around. "How are the kids doing?"

"Well, thank you. They can be a bloody nightmare when they decide that it's time to do things their way which includes wasting time when we're late for school." She laughs. "Thank you for asking. How is the Prime Minister?"

"In perfect health, pity your lot wants to throw him out. The things we could achieve with another Labour government."

"We don't-"

"Oh, don't be silly. I'm joking." Jemma laughs heartlessly under the secretary's inquisitive glance. "But I simply must speak with papa now and shan't bother you any further. I know the way."

She opens the glass door without knocking, barging into her father's office without announcing herself or caring whether or not she's interrupting important business. He's sitting at his desk, writing something on his computer, and doesn't look up at the sudden interruption. 

She says, "Papa."

Jemma walks towards the desk and sits down, turning around the frames and then throwing them down before flipping through his papers with nonchalance. She waits for her father to tell her to stop it but the reproach doesn't come. Indifference through and through. It diminishes the joy and halves the entertainment. She stops at once, dropping her hands in her lap.

"What can I do for you?" asks her father, barely looking up.

"Nothing. You wouldn't do it anyway, would you, papa?" She stops, thinking back to a night years ago, half-buried in her memory and suddenly surfacing, pushing through the happy moments of her childhood, darkening it. Suddenly, she's overwhelmed by a primordial need for her father to feel guilty, to acknowledge his role as a passive bystander, as victim and perpetrator.

For a moment they're in his office at home, their ancestral home and not the empty flat in the city, the curtains still open and the snow falling faintly, faintly snowing, gathering up on the windowsill. Her father busy choosing a tie, looking professional, and Jemma in a pyjama with a unicorn print, holding a stuffed bear in her hand. Her mother working late, busy fixing the table seats, and the first guests driving up the driveway, the tires causing the gravel road to crackle. The conviction, even at such a tender age, that no one should do it to anybody else. The utter faith in her father, hoping for a reaction, for the beginning of a journey out of misery, away from all that panic. The early days of his father career, the importance he gave to family soon to be dismantled one indifferent word after the other. She clenches her fists, knuckles turning white, her nails digging into the soft flesh of her palms.

"This whole thing looks vaguely familiar does it not? Only I'm what? Twenty years older than I was back then. Less naive." Jemma scoffs. "I used to think the world of you, you know. I trusted you. I trusted you'd do something, anything to make it stop, but you just had to turn it all around as you always do. Do you remember that night, papa? How I came into your study."

"Rather," says her father impassively, his voice cold.

"Do you remember the party? What happened afterwards?"

"Yes, you made us look like fools. You simply had to ruin things, didn't you?" He stops. "What's all this about, Jemma? Surely you're not here for a trip down memory lane."

"No, I'm not. Good, I'm glad you remember. I hope that the memory of that night will haunt you for the rest of your days." Jemma grins. "Remember what told me that night? You asked me the same damn thing. But I know you of old and you never do anything. You never did."

"Jemma, I'm warning you." 

"Have you seen the piece on the news?" she asks and takes out the newspaper from her bag before throwing it onto the desk.

"I have," says her father, throwing it away without looking. "I'm rather let down, brings up quite some memories."

"Doesn't it just. You must have had such a terrible time, always. And you know what, this way of yours of turning the tables and stand there, ignoring the consequences... the effects that your words have at any other level."

"You know, Jemma, it wasn't me putting coke on my nose in public. That was you."

"They were not doing this to you, they were doing this to me."

"Even so that was on you. It wasn't a onetime thing, was it? The coke, yes, but everything else..."

"Hardly my fault was it?" She smiles at him. " Oh, no, I forgot. Nothing is ever your fault. You sound just like mama. Next thing you'll say is that I deserved all of it and you didn't. All of it. Even then." 

"I don't see the point of you being here, Jemma." He pauses and stands up, his swivel chair rolling to hit the wall. "I'll ask someone to see you out."

"Fuck you, papa! I came here to apologize or to talk, but you always have to be-"

"You're an adult, Jemma, please start acting like one."

"Fuck you! We're having a family dinner if you're not too above us to show up. I'm leaving now, but fuck you, papa. I don't like you one bit."

"Neither do I. Was it really necessary to have this circus here?"

She slams the door behind her. 

"Jemma!" calls her father's political advisor. "I say, is that you?"

"No, someone else entirely," she replies. "Who else would it be? Listen- I've been at his flat, the hot water has been turned off and there's no sign of papa. Do you know what all of that's about?"

"I can't."

"Please?" she asks, taking his hand. "For the old times' sake."

"For the old times' sake?" He asks bewildered. "Jemma, please don't twist it. We had sex once, twice if you count that-, and we were caught not quite in flagrante delicto but still... It kind of feels like the point now, doesn't it? Which, fine, we both agreed on it. We were both playing with each other."

"You're the one who said-"

"Yes, I was the one. I shouldn't have. It was fun, I'll give you that, and there are no hard feelings. Not on my side anyway."

"No, it was that once."

"Yes, but I'm on fucking thin ice ever since."

"I'm not here for a rebound if that's what you're worried about," she says. "I'm not going to drag you to the bathroom for a shag or anything like that."

"No, neither am I. I just don't think that having sex once makes you entitled to know what's going on."

Jemma laughs. Then, bluntly, she asks, "Does papa have another life?"

"I can't tell you. You know I can't."

"In the old days, I'd have fucked that answer out of you."

"I'd have let you or, you know, proposed it myself." He laughs. "I'm sorry, Jemma."

"Loyal to the boss, are you? Definitely not how I remember you. You always seemed quite talkative while you..." She pauses, blushing. "I'm sorry, I'm holding it against you. Being crass. Amazing though what a couple of years can do to you. But it's nothing against you personally. It's not even... Listen, I don't regret anything that happened and I don't want to-"

"Jemma-"

"Never mind, I'm leaving."

"Alright, there's a woman. Some American, but you didn't hear it from me."

"Someone has to be, I suppose. Does he love her?"

"I don't know. I really don't know, I swear."

"But you're saying that he's living with her."

"Yes."

"Oh." She pauses. "Well then-"

"You're not going to-"

"I'm going to go home, I think a visit's overdue."


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'd.
> 
> Mentions of sexual and physical abuse.

The kitchen smells of fresh vegetables and spices, of oil frying in a pan and onions. It's penetrating and were it not for the exaggeratedly high temperatures outside, the windows would long have been opened so as not to let the strong smell saturate the air and the clothes or the furniture in the living room on the other side of the corridor. She's chopping garlic, the knife moving skilfully and rhythmically hitting the wooden cutting board - a relaxing activity, all of her attention is turned to the simple motion, paying attention so as not to chop her fingers. Once she's done, she throws the garlic into the pan and its sizzling fills the air as she grabs for the half-empty bottle of scotch that rests on the counter and takes a large gulp, swallowing it down with a wave of nausea hitting her as soon as she gulps. The amber liquid burns in her throat and her stomach twists and turns, the whole room feels as if it is only now starting to spin all around her and she grabs the counter with such strength that her knuckles turn white, waiting for it to pass.

"Jemma?" asks her mother as she walks into the room, carrying a pile of music sheets in her arm and placing them on the kitchen table. "I think you've drunk enough. Give me that bottle."

"No," she replies, snatching it once more and taking another sip just to spite her mother. She is feeling sick, knows that she had enough, and yet other than nausea and the dizziness there's nothing else, not even the first welcomed hints of oblivion. And she wants oblivion and lack of memories; she wants to stand there like a stranger in her own childhood home; test how far she can go and how long she'll remain in control of it all now that she's verging on losing it completely. 

"Jemma-"

"It's the expensive stuff," she adds. "And I bought it with my own money, which I earned by working for the prime minister of Great fucking Britain, so I can do what I want. I'm not sixteen and I'm not drinking your alcohol, I'm drinking  _ my _ alcohol. I say, I'm going to finish this bottle and pass on to something else if I bloody feel like it."

She moves to the pan, a hot cloud of condensation hits her face as she lifts the lid and Jemma winches. As she stirs what's inside, she takes another sip, missing her mouth, the amber liquid runs down her chin and drops onto the floor. Her mother moves past the table, closer to her, stretching out her hand in a silent request to be handed over the wooden spoon. Jemma flinches.

"Give it to me and go get changed," her mother says flatly. "You stink of alcohol and are drunk, there's some Alkalizer in the bathroom cabinet."

"It's a bit late, don't you think?" asks Jemma, turning around. "To start acting like my mother. Oh, I remember, you didn't want me, did you, mama? You didn't care about having a daughter or a son. You didn't care about having children. You said so yourself."

"I'm warning you-"

"About what? What are you going to do, send me to boarding school halfway across the country so that you could finally get rid of me as you always wanted to? Wait, I'm too old for that now." She grins. "You did that once already, didn't you? You both did. I heard you, mama."

Listening from behind a closed hospital door when she should have been in bed, her whole body aching, refusing to speak. And her parents on the other side, agreeing on something for the first time in her life, and her mother saying that she never wanted a daughter in the first place, that she should have had that abortion, and their voices rising louder and louder. She could hear them from under the covers or maybe she was merely imagining it - looking back, she's not too sure about what was real and what wasn't.

"Are you going to kick me out of the house?" Jemma laughs cruelly, feeling the tears prickle in her eyes. "You will do no such thing because you  _ know _ that I have every right to stay here. I deserve to get trashed and you know that you deserve every cruel word, every accusation. Did you know, mama? Did you know that papa has a girlfriend or am I the only one who was hardly up to date about what the Simmons were up to? Oh, I bet he's having fun alright."

The worst thing of all, she wants to add, is that she never saw her father happier than on that dreadful afternoon she spent following him and his mistress around London. What a life they all could have had, had they not been born into theirs. All of them: her father free to be with someone he liked better, someone he even loved perhaps, her mother with her own independent life and no children, and herself without her parents and grandparents. All of them living the lives of their ancestors, a vicious cycle never to be broken, drinking up all the poison that spilt from one generation to the next. What would it feel like to be that lucky? To wake up in the morning without the oppression of other people's childhood, knowing even though in a self-preserving way that you had lived it too, that no one had stopped, that all they did was handing down misery - the largest inheritance of all.

"What on God's green earth are you talking about?"

"About papa's other family?" Jemma pauses and exhales sharply. Her mother's face is devoid of all emotions and realization hits her suddenly and powerfully as she says, "Oh, you knew! You knew and neither of you considered it relevant enough to tell me. Great. Sometimes I do wonder what the point of it all is."

"You have to understand-"

"No, I do understand. I should have- And don't come telling me about the parade or whatever pitiful excuse you two tell yourselves at night to feel better. I know all about it. I mean, Lord Jesus fuck! You threw me to the fucking wolves! You should have divorced years ago. You shouldn't have married. You shouldn't have had me! I didn't ask for this. I didn't ask for any of this to happen!" Jemma pauses and throws the knife into the sink. There's a loud noise and her mother flinches. Jemma takes the knife out and throws it again another time. With purpose and cruelty. "What?"

"That's not how you cook chicken, Jemma. Let me..." 

Her mother tries to push her away as she grabs for the fork in Jemma's hands. Jemma sees red, repressed anger comes out at once and she pushes her mother with excessive force, barely registering her own actions, leaving them both looking at each other completely flabbergasted. She knows she should apologize, quickly add that she didn't mean to. She should apologize, an overwhelming instinct, an awareness at the back of her mind. She should apologize and blame herself, on the unspoken feeling that she could burn the house to the ground. She should apologize because there are half-forgotten memories, wriggling in without her permission, memories she'd rather repress to keep some entitlement, mixing with stories of utter humiliation that took place at dinner - spoken out loud, as if they were the most natural things on earth or spied through an ajar door, as if they happened everywhere, in every house, in every family in the country, deeply ingrained in everyday life. Her mother on all fours on the floor. Jemma must have been three, not yet old enough to understand, going away, trying not to make any noise so as not to be caught.

She thinks about hugging her mother, something she never did before, but doesn't. Instead, she says, "I'm cooking it the way I want. You can make your own dinner if you care that much. Papa will be here soon and then we'll talk. I think we should."

"I think you should stop drinking."

"No, I think I just might drink myself to destruction." She pauses, stabbing the chicken with all the force she can muster. "I'm going outside to have a smoke, don't- don't touch dinner."

The air is hot, unbearably so. It's a novel-like heat that in novels always causes people to misbehave, letting it go to their heads, acting irresponsibly, with flushed faces and droplets of sweat rolling down their foreheads. Part of the European heatwave that makes people up north wonder what the fuss is all about, their fresh summer temperatures hardly fitting such a ghastly description of expected summer weather. It's almost impossible to stay outside under the afternoon sun, still high in the sky, without a cloud to be seen, and all the thermometers on the game larders across the country are, with no doubt, registering incredible and sensational records, at any rate to England. 

Jemma makes her way through the grass, the glass blades soft under her bare feet, past the flowerbeds, to the wooden table in the backyard. The wood is ruined by time and bad weather, the whole place, once put there in hope of happy family meals or garden parties, whether for an anniversary, a birthday, or as an excuse to have people over, has long fallen into disuse. In a corner, her own initials carved into the wood years earlier, a couple of days before the beginning of the school year, the last hint of her childhood, a testament of it, still there after the hasty house renovations.

Under the green foliage of a tree, its shadows dancing on the grass, with the summer light distorting reality, oblivion feels more alluring than ever. She lights herself a cigarette and puffs the smoke away as she looks at the house, considering possible futures. She doesn't feel like herself, for the first time in years, so she might as well walk back inside and agree with her mother on everything - on the uncooked chicken, on her drinking too much, on being an overall rotten and unlikable person. Pour the whiskey down the drain and start again: a quick trip to the bathroom, a change of clothes, cleaning herself up, brushing her teeth. Clean and polished. The past perfectly away. Untouchable. The place isn't hers when every trace has been removed after having been sent to school, so she might as well play along, accept the farce, perfect daughter and perfect family, with no past and no future. Like extending an olive branch yet again and welcoming her father with a warmth she hasn't felt in years.

"Fuck it," she sighs.

She could call Fitz. It's summer and it's the weekend so maybe he's not doing anything of importance, watching a movie or reading one of the books from the precarious and tumbling pile in his living room. Unless he's busy being otherwise entertained. The latter option feels more appealing, bringing forth a pang of guilt. Phantom faces, she can't even decide the sex of such a partner, but the room as hot as a bakery while she sits there miles away, supposedly ignorant and faking happiness, while someone else - decent, better, not at all spoiled, rotten and vicious (if she's allowed to borrow his own words) - gets to touch him and hear him laugh and hold him close; hear him speak and watch him, attentively, moving in a cramped and slightly untidy apartment with a pile of dishes still to be washed and, in the evening, the flickering light above the kitchen stove. Or maybe he's back in Lewis and yet, still, there might be an unnamed person with him, one she can't even begin with to imagine, will have all the things that she ever wanted - something other than sex, something that cannot possibly be reduced to a simple crudity of his cock and her cunt, satisfying. Lasting. On the verge of being perfect. She could, should, call him to make herself even more miserable and leave behind the little dignity she feels she has left by asking whether or not she's interrupting something, barging in to feel something, the mawkish sense of being right and wishing him well, have some closure.

She picks up her phone, unlocks it, and then puts it down again. Bobbi's offer is still on the table and it's tempting to just dial her best friend's number, have a good cry, allow herself to be vulnerable and say  _ I thought I was doing better, but I'm such a fucking mess _ . She could ask Bobbi to drive up and pick her up, is sure that Bobbi would do it without questions or doubts, and she could spend the entire car journey crying, sobbing her heart out until there are no more tears and peacefulness, an odd feeling that has never really been hers, settles down. Washed out and empty. She should call Bobbi in the same way she should apologize to her mother, a series of exactitudes that could easily be written down on a list and be ticked off one after the other, rejoicing at another task completed, welcoming the feeling of doing the right thing rather than have another row and spend the rest of the afternoon drinking, trying to forget, yelling.

Barely visible from where she's sitting, the wishing well. Out of use, covered in thick wooden beams that would never break under the weight of a child jumping on top of them. A girl with braided hair, wearing a nightgown, in the frigid December air, wishing for the world to crack open and swallow her whole, while bright yellow lights shone inside the house and the chatter of people grew louder and louder, like serpentine whispers at first, leading her on and making her think that someone would notice. A stranger. Someone kind and caring. A crack and silence.  _ I hope they don't find me here. But what if they do? _

By the time she walks back inside, her father has arrived and he's sitting at the dinner table drinking a glass of wine. Still in his suit, though the jacket is now hanging on the back of his chair and his cuffs rest on the table. She barely looks at him and he barely looks at his wife, there they are pretending to be a family; All that is missing are the newspapers and her atlas, and she'd swear that it's a nightmare - trapped in time with her family. What on earth happened to them? Centuries of unhappiness, of that she's sure. The one everlasting certitude, neither of her parents ever pretended for it to be a secret. Going back through generations, one could hardly name one person who was happy. On either side. Why anyone would bring a child into the mix escapes her and always will.

"Ah, Jemma, there you are," says her father sharply. "We were beginning to worry that you had j-"

"Papa," she cuts him off matter-of-factly. Jemma walks to her bottle of whiskey, gulps down the remaining liquid rather than pouring it into the sink. She's doing this, she thinks, too bloody late. 

"Now, that is most certainly a welcome," comments her father. "How much did you have to drink already? Your mother thinks that you've had enough."

"Well then," Jemma grins and takes out a wine glass from the cabinet. Feeling sick she walks to the bottle. Still too sober. Still no sign of oblivion. All those memories wriggling in. "I might join you and toast to her."

"That's enough," says her mother. "You've had enough. That's it."

"That's enough," Jemma mocks her and pours herself a glass of wine, the liquid is dangerously close to overflowing before she slurps some of it. Loudly. "Ah, the fancy stuff. Glad, we're all such connoisseurs."

"Jemma-"

"Jemma-" she jokes, her face distorted into a grimace. "Don't do this, Jemma. Don't do that, Jemma. Remember when it used to be, don't say anything, Jemma. No, don't talk about whatever the fuck happened to you because the same happened to me and I simply cannot bring myself to care about my own fucking daughter. So off you go to boarding school, we can't have you around acting like a deranged... Does mama know? Did he tell you?"

"About what?"

"About his daughter. His other daughter. The one in London." She pauses and burps, her stomach burns and she feels the bitter taste of bile at the back of her throat. "Oh, I've met her! She's insufferable, jealous, and worst of all sane. Well adjusted. The first Simmons in centuries! I suppose that's what happens to you when your own fucking parents don't... when you don't spend most of your time thinking to be somewhere else just to avoid thinking about what is actually happening to you. What were you doing, papa? Away from all of this... did it turn you on?"

"Jemma!"

"Having sex knowing... knowing! About what was happening in this house. How good was that woman in bed, huh? How fucking good did she have to be in order to forget what your parents did to you and were probably going to do to me! You left me alone with them! Now, I've had sex plenty of times throughout the years but Lord Jesus fuck! As good as it was, it never cancelled the past, it never made me fucking forget."

Her mother stands up abruptly, her chair screeching against the tiled floor. "I won't have you talk like that."

"Why? I'm almost thirty, mama, you cannot possibly think that I never had sex in my life! What? Snoring cocaine at the weekend is fine but you draw the line at having sex? What kind of world are you living in," she says, feeling like a hypocrite. 

Her mother may excuse the occasional night out, she may have brushed the news off without too much fuss, blaming it once more on youth and company, on Jemma herself. But as she looks at them, she feels like admitting that maybe, maybe she could excuse her father's corruption had he not left her at home with her grandparents, had he not turned his back on her all those years ago. The two things are inexplicably linked, but one comes before the other and feels of slightly more importance. 

"That's not-"

"Oh, I've had sex and I swear to God, I'll shock you out of that glass cabinet of yours. Let's see, papa's political advisor at an office party for starters. Strangers in bathroom stalls. Unhygienic bathroom stalls in nightclubs like a goddamn- And I ruined-" She sighs. "I-"

Her thoughts are a whirl of  _ don't think about it _ over and over again as memories begin to surface. Of her and Milton together, for the second to last time ever, being terrible people and all but subtle, at a funeral, at her grandparent's funeral and in his car. In a McDonald's with greasy food in front of them. And she remembers being slightly high and Milton was probably slightly tipsy, basking in their self-dislike and self-hatred, being terrible people. Something about a date gone wrong - horrible, he had called her to talk about it and the lack of understanding saying there would probably not be around two no matter how good the sex had been. Something about mutual closeness, the desperate need to be there for each other, always dangerously close to codependency: they had always known the other better than anyone. Drinking too much and never talking, using sarcasm to deflect. Both of them are equally guilty. And Milton's ditched date somehow showing up, by accident: he had told them that he'd be at a funeral and there they were, laughing their hearts out and drunk on rage and pain, sitting in a fast-food restaurant in their finest black clothes, trying not to think, celebrating the end of an era. She had kissed him, earlier, she remembers that - it had been furious, a distraction, something to feel. It had not been betrayal, she had talked herself out of it, it couldn't have been because Milton had not been seeing anyone so who cared about being caught by someone he had had dinner with a week before. 

But they had been caught and looked like liars because they had left the funeral parlour to avoid people and complimentary remarks that felt like poison. There was no betrayal, no sexual escapade, something else unexplainable to people that didn't know them and any attempt at explanation would have required insight into their past and that was out of the question. There had been a scene and she had laughed cruelly in someone's face, sheer hilarity from a very understandable misunderstanding to the point of inflating it as if she and Milton had never been to that funeral, sitting down on a cold bench, at the back, refusing to speak, but had found themselves at either of their places, undressed, keeling over a bed, his cock and her cunt. There had been no betrayal, but there could have been, history could have gone differently, and she'd have ruined, actively ruined, someone's relationship for a moment of comfort. Milton wouldn't have said no, they would have allowed themselves to be stupid and vulnerable and rotten, ruining things, childish. A different self might have invited him rather than get in his car, sitting next to him, their hands briefly touching and their mouths lingering for a moment too long. She had wanted to ask him to stay. It would have hurt less to be found having sex with him because there would have been a reason to be angry and they wouldn't have felt the urge to defend themselves and not being able to, hiding the past, deferring.  _ It's not as it looks _ . Laughter. Hot tears, later, as they lie side by side on the carpet in her living room.  _ Can I look now? Not yet. _

_ Not yet. _

_ Not yet. _

_ Do you ever wish you were somebody else? _

Perhaps Fitz had been indeed right.

"So papa escaped. He escaped from this shit of a place that used to be drenched in the smell of violence and beatings and- What? Did you decide that you no longer liked me?"

"Well, I certainly don't like you now."

"Well, bad luck" You should get in line." She stops and drops her glass which falls on the floor, shattering. "Did it make you happy? Your life in London with a newborn child? Are there others? Oh, I'd love to know."

"Wouldn't you just?"

"How much offspring is there exactly? Do they all look up to you the way that girl does?"

"It happened once," says her mother. "Other than that woman. The American one."

"And you, mama? All those nights working late? I know you didn't want to see me, but- What kind of twisted game is this? A game of revenge? Do you have an agreement? I'd be fine with that, but you fucked me over in the process!" She pauses and exhales sharply. "I met her, you know. My sister. Looks exactly like him."

_ You must have had a golden childhood, _ the girl had said as if it were the most natural conclusion in the world. The meeting at the café repeats itself over and over with praises of her father scattered in, those were the only things she couldn't excuse. What did a stranger know about any of it? How did they dare to assume, just as Fitz had done? Oblivious to the indifference and circumstances, deducing, making things up.

"She's innocent," Jemma adds. "The first person in the Simmons family to be pure and innocent. Please, she doesn't fit. She doesn't belong. How long will it last? How long did it last?"

"A couple of months," her father said. "She wasn't born yet. It wasn't-"

"Don't." Jemma shakes her head. "I was going to tell her everything about our little chat. Tell her to stay out of it because she'll be disappointed. Inevitably. Come on! It's you we're talking about. What are you going to do when she comes to you with a problem? Tell her that you were born out of rape and destined to be raped too? Like you said to me! I was ten! Ten! I wasn't looking for that, I wanted to- Christ."

"Jemma-"

"Are you letting her back into your life?"

"Yes, I will."

Jemma nods. "So you've decided that you want another daughter. What? Is she better than me? Is she more likeable?"

"Especially when you're like this." 

She can't tell whether it's supposed to be a joke or an exactitude, it might be the latter. She can hardly deny that she doesn't like herself, making other people ruddy miserable - Fitz and the girl Milton was seeing and everyone else too. She says, "Don't invite her home, you might have to redecorate then. You always knew better than me what was going on, you fucking knew! But I remember now, I understand. And you just... You can't put this right, papa. You can't take her in and pretend that it will make up for not having acknowledged me once in my life."

"Didn't I?" asks her father. "Didn't I? When you ended up on the front page of every newspaper in the country I stood by your side. When they found you snorting coke, I stood by your side. You didn't behave at the funeral and we didn't say anything, we let you do it. You're spoiled, Jemma, and it's not enough."

"What would you have wanted to do? Smack me around the ear, use your belt as your father did to you! Push me on a bed and press my head into the mattress while- Don't you dare make that face, both of you. You will hear it out loud, you'll take responsibility and then I'll go on making everyone's life a nightmare because that's all we do. That's all we're good for." Jemma shakes her head and takes another gulp of white wine. Her stomach twists and turns and she feels dizzy, like looking down from a window at too high a store and wondering as the cars drive down. She says, "Too bloody late."

She grips the counter tightly, knuckles turning white, lunch forgotten. Fitz's words echoing, ringing in her ears. Spoiled, rotten, spoilt, rich. But who isn't? She walks into the living room, her parents quiet. Thinking about the rottenness eating them all away and no matter how many decorations and renovations will ever mask it, like worms eating the place away, a monument to abuse and unhappiness. Everyone watching as other lives are being destroyed and still dragging new people into it. Perhaps Fitz did well in running away, seeing the essence, a bare glimpse to it. Unspoilt. 

"I know you're angry," says her mother, stepping up. "But if we could talk- You have to know that-"

"What, that you are sorry? Like hell you are! You can ram your apologies up your arse," she yells, her voice echoing around the house. "I am angry. Rage, my heart's racing with it. There was one thing you were obliged to do. One. It wasn't much. You should have protected me. So why didn't either of you do something?" 

She whines, as hot and angry tears roll down her cheeks, falling down onto her shirt along with snot, breakfast and alcohol back in her throat and they come out, spilling all over the carpet as she sits down, hitting her knees and crying out for the sudden pain, before curling in foetal position in her own vomit, the shattered glass dangerously close. Long lost memories flooding her brain against her will and understanding fully for the first time in years, able to pinpoint everything and give it a name, no longer relegated to the realm of nightmares. "Why didn't you?"


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta'd.

The air in the car is tense. Lord Simmons' words on television, spoken but half an hour earlier, echo inside his ears - distinctively, perfectly articulated despite the nervous gestures as if an entire future was not at play, with an equal chance of backfiring as the past took over. A secret daughter, that much was confirmed and names would inevitably appear in the morning newspaper - someone would talk, as people always do, and there would be journalists in front of a little tourist shop somewhere in London, buzzing like flies, circling like vultures with their microphones stretched out and their recorders on. Tabloid publicity, loud and exaggerated, playing on people's universal inclination to gossip, printed on the stands he passes by every morning - black capital letters and maybe, perhaps, probably, some ancient photographs. Leaked and blurry. Outdated.

The world will descend into chaos if it hasn't already and it will blow out in a day or two, something else coming up, something of more import, more interesting than an extramarital affair and an illegitimate child. But the pieces of news, dropped like a bomb on national television, is going to inevitably alter the public's opinion - of that Fitz is sure. If he were Lord Simmons, he'd do the same just to become the centre of attention and make people talk, let them forget that not once in his life did he have to struggle in order to get something, not even work, that living in a country house and having a title and more money than the average person is as far removed from reality as his political ideas. A man living in the past, it seems oddly fitting that he ended up relying on it in order to make his big announcement. Months spent saying that he would not run, that he had no intention to become the next Prime Minister and there he was, sitting in a studio in a tailored suit and black tie, announcing that he had changed his mind. A change of mind because of a daughter he had never properly met, but it was time to take responsibility and act as a father to that fatherless and estranged girl.

Fitz wants to laugh. There is sheer hilarity in Lord Simmons' acknowledgement of his offspring, something that hasn't happened in years, and it seems impossible to deny that it feels more and more like reluctance turning into willingness at the thought of the ultimate political price. 

"I'm going to turn my phone off," he tells Radcliffe as the car drives into Downing Street. Outside, the Georgian buildings tower themselves towards the clouded sky as dusk starts to fall. The lampposts cast an eerie yellow light and give the street a surreal look. "I have no intention of working tonight because there is nothing to be done."

"Are you asking me for permission?"

"No, I'm stating a fact. If you need anything-"

"I won't. Fitz, I'm a grown man, I don't need you to run errands of any kind. You're my colleague, not my maid."

"Alright then. Thank you, I guess."

"Any plans for tonight?" asks Radcliffe. "Is that why you're going to turn off your phone?"

"No." Fitz laughs. "God, no. There's a party at Hunter's but that's hardly the reason, I don't want to hear anything about illegitimate children or read Simmons' name for a couple of days at least."

"Understandable."

"I'll have to eventually." He pauses and looks out of the window. The car is slowing down, past the red house of Number 12, formerly the Chief Whip's Office, which houses the Press Office, the Strategic Communication Unit and Information and Research Unit. "Bobbi and Hunter are back together, that's why they're having a party. It's already lasted more than last time so that's saying something. Who knows, the- oh, I don't know. This time might be the charm. We'll see. Hunter seems to think so."

He doesn't quite know why he's blurting out his friends' private lives to Radcliffe - unofficially and after work, but still in a working environment. But there's something, happiness, the feeling that if Hunter is trying to fix things and put his life into place then maybe he should too. There's something interestingly peculiar about his friends' relationship: getting together and breaking up part of their routines, never lasting too long, and the times in-between scattered with momentary reconciliation. It wouldn't fit him, but envies the astonishing speed with which rows are forgotten as if the larger thoughts were easily reached and inanities do not matter.

"I don't know why I'm telling you this," adds Fitz. "We didn't have a conversation like this in months."

"Hunter and Bobbi are both well, I trust."

"As well as they can be. Hunter's thinking of marriage but he isn't sure Bobbi will agree a second time and even if she does, he says he doesn't have the money for another divorce. I suppose they'll figure it out eventually."

Radcliffe laughs and undoes his seatbelt as the car stops in front of Number 10. He says. "And what about you, Fitz?"

"Me?" He stops. "Oh, that. No. There used to be someone, but- Breach of trust. Irreparable, I'm afraid. It all seems a bit silly and pointless now, but what's done is done. No, there isn't anyone. Not for a while."

There hasn't been anyone since, too haunted by that April Sunday morning to even try. Close, on two occasions, to forget about the whole ordeal without ever managing to bring himself to actually do anything about it. One night stands were never his thing, not really, not even with Jemma with whom he had fooled himself into believing that they were friends and that there could be something eventually if they allowed themselves to say it out loud, innocent words slipping out post-coital  _ would you like to go eat something. Together. _ Getting dressed with the mere intention of getting undressed while still thinking that his relationship with Jemma never reached its potential nor conclusion. He had been used, partly perhaps, but still used and he knew himself well enough to know that if she came to him in any of the evenings after their row, he'd probably let her in and end up in bed with her all over again. He hadn't been insincere when he said that he didn't want it to end, but alienation and silence were definitely better for his own sanity. A bit of self-respect. He wouldn't, couldn't, crawl back to her not to collect his apologies, not for a shag.

And yet, the whole affair with her father, the admission on live television and to the press that a child existed and reconciliation was going to happen because he had been asked. After all, it was the right thing to do. After all, he was a family man, changed things and rearranged the cards on the table. He feels sorry for her, pities her, imagines what it must feel like to be in her shoes despite not knowing anything about her. Now, looking back, it feels as if he should have accepted that cup of tea and waited for an explanation that in the sorry months and weeks had not come.

"It'll pass," says Radcliffe. "You sound rather heartbroken."

"Who says I want it to pass?" asks Fitz with nonchalance. "And I'm not heartbroken. It was nothing."

He regrets his words as soon as they leave his mouth and wishes he could simply take them back. It's hardly the time and the place to discuss any of it and what is there to say? That he genuinely likes Jemma Simmons and can't get the thought of her to leave his head? That's pathetic, he feels pathetic. He pities her as much as he pities himself and it seems rather unlikely that Jemma would ever make the first step and raise a white flag, surrender, apologize willingly through a message or phone call. Perhaps he should have paid more attention rather than leashing out and then withdrawing and never speak to her again, but she shouldn't have kept misdirecting her anger at him. So maybe they are indeed even, equally hurt and insulted, equally angry and cold. But that cup of tea... Had they not been friends? Had he not cared about her despite never really having a proper conversation about anything - not much time to find out, out of their clothes and into bed. He shouldn't have let her suck him off at a stupid charity concert; he should have insisted on knowing what the hell was going on and why on earth they were standing all aroused and out of breath in a room above a concert hall. On her knees, his cock in her mouth, bobbing her head. It would have led to another argument but better to have had one in February at the very beginning than one in April. Not so many things at stake then.

"It's nothing," adds Fitz. "I know that it doesn't- Radcliffe, you know that you are like a father to me and always have been... The Prime Minister is waiting."

"The Prime Minister can wait."

"Always have been. God knows Alistair was a pitiful excuse of it all, but there's- one day, I will tell you. Soon, perhaps Not that it's important." He pauses and looks away. "Suppose there was someone."

"Are we putting a name on that person?"

"No."

"Alright."

"It wasn't much, but there was... something. Suppose it goes well for a while and you think, well, I might just take this a step forward. Suppose you were out of your depths and then... How was I supposed to know how to step over the inanities, Radcliffe? And as I said, breach of trust. That hurts the most. But suppose you've started to look at it differently-"

"Oh, Fitz."

"From a different perspective." He wants to ask Radcliffe what he knows about Jemma, but remains silent. "Can't quite put my finger on it, that's the problem. You know, the worst thing of all, is that I was right. Am right. Why do I have to feel the urgent need to apologize for my behaviour?"

"Fitz, with your Spaniel heart. If I can help in any way-"

"I don't know, I think I'm driving myself mad with this infinite string of hypotheticals. I used to be so sure about everything. Now? Not so much." He looks at his clock. "But we must go now."

"Lord Simmons must be done by now," he says as they step on the sidewalk.

"They're going to be insane now that he announced that he will be running."

"Yeah, especially because he announced it this late. They're gonna vote for him, are they not?"

"I'm afraid so." Radcliffe pauses. "He really did have a daughter."

"Apparently. One may wonder why he never acknowledged the one he already had."

"Jemma? He-"

"No, don't feed me that shit. We both know that it was never like that."

"So you are on her side? Interesting."

"Maybe. I mean, think of it, you find out that you have another sibling, an estranged sibling, and they're better likes than you are. Must take a toll. I know Jemma isn't likeable most of the time. That she's crude and blunt and does whatever she wants. Hell, she has that way of figuring people out and then use it against them like free ammunition, still..." He looks away. "Not that it matters. It isn't about her."

"Maybe it is. Partly. It's a war between them, Fitz, everyone knows that. One wonders the lengths Jemma will go to win. Still, no way back, but we shall see what people think about him in the morning. Nothing much to do now."

"I suppose. I mean, there isn't. It'll blow out one day, it's gonna be hell for the girl."

"Still, he asked for permission, she's the one who contacted him, to begin with."

"Yes." He feels guilty having accused Jemma so easily of being ready to go to the press, the situation now of which he once was so sure, makes no sense, even looking at it from a distance. "You know, everyone-"

"Everyone?"

"Thought that this would ruin his career, it isn't, is it? The exact opposite, back being the man of the people. What's next? promising that we won't have to hear the words European Union ever again? It wasn't about the country, it was about him and if you were to blink, you'd miss it. Christ, the Simmons have a way with words."

"You spend a lot of time listening to them?" jokes Radcliffe.

Fitz shrugs. In front of them, Number 10 with its modest black facade, the light at the door shines brightly. It's imposing and overly formal, a landmark like any other. Three hundred years old and containing approximately one hundred rooms. The front door small, six-panelled door, originally made of black oak and now in blast-proof steel ever since the IRA mortar attack back in 1991, is surrounded by the cream-coloured casing and adorned with a semicircular fanlight window. In the middle, at hands reach, the black iron knocker shaped like a lion's head.

"Do you need a lift home?" asks Radcliffe as they wait.

"No, I think I'll just go for a walk. Might do me some good. Take the tube. I was rather hoping I'd-"

The door opens and they walk inside, their feet on the black and white marble floor. The hall is relatively small with the Kent stone triple staircase leading upstairs. On the walls engravings and photographs of former Prime Ministers decorate the walls and stare at them, looking as though they're studying their every move.

"We were expecting you. This way, please" says Jemma. She points at Fitz. "Not you. I don't see why you're here at all."

Radcliffe looks at them, puzzled, the dislike in Jemma's voice perfectly clear. For a moment he's tempted to just turn around and leave, ignore the ache in his chest and the need to have a neat closure to whatever happened between them. Let her be angry forever, it can hardly be his fault. He watches her leave, her heels clicking on the floor, opening and closing the door. 

Once she comes back, she stares at him, her eyes wide open. Then, flippantly, she says, "Why are you still here, Fitz?"

"I was just thinking that we could talk," he replies. 

"Well, isn't that a new one?" she sounds sarcastic and doesn't smile.

"Somewhere. Outside. This place has a yard, I know that."

"Oh, good, you're informed. Did your homework. This way," she says and leads him to the rear, headed to the terrace that overlooks the half-acre open lawn garden that is no longer fitted with  _ variety Walle fruits and diverse fruit trees _ as it was in the seventeenth century. Constructed in 1736, the terrace offers a full view of St. James' Park though the darkness now hides most of it, including the flowerbeds. 

"So, let's talk," she says.

"I know I've been avoiding you."

"I know. Or, well, I figured." Jemma pauses and exhales sharply. "If you're here to point out the obvious then you might as well leave. I have work to do."

"If you want me to go, I'll go. You know that you can just say it, you never seemed to have a problem with that before, did you?"

She laughs cruelly. "Good. Same old you. I like you like this, makes it easier to-"

"To what?"

"Never mind. So you're here, what made you change your mind?"

"I don't know. Thought it was time to grow the fuck up."

"Alright then, let's be adults. I shan't bite your head off if that's what you were afraid of. Listen, I think I owe you an apology. I know I owe you an apology so this is me apologizing. I'm sorry, Fitz. Months late, but I am sorry."

"Apologies accepted."

"Bally good. You can go now."

"I wasn't going to walk around collecting them."

"Yet here you are, collecting them. You can't have it both ways, Fitz."

"I needed-"

"What?"

Closure, he wants to say, because I can't stop thinking about you. I cannot stop thinking about that morning and the fact that I may have misinterpreted everything. He swallows the words down. He says, "Never mind. How's life?"

"Excellent as always. I'm having a blast." 

Jemma coughs and looks away as silence settles between them. He wants to ask about her father, it's on everyone's mouth and probably on every newspaper, it'll be the hottest topic in months, overshadowing, perhaps, his own trial back in February. He wants to ask how that's affecting her. Let them make it even more personal and try to be honest with each other for the first time ever. And if it backfires then he's got his apologies and she handed them to him, reluctantly, possibly discovering that the weight of the world doesn't necessarily rest on her shoulders.

"You?" she asks.

"Can't complain."

"Good for you. You must be terribly busy."

"A bit."

"The end is near."

"Odd. Time really does fly."

"I should hope so. Any plans after that? I've heard Radcliffe is going to retire, back to Scotland is it?"

"Glasgow."

"Ah, I'd have thought Lewis."

"Why?"

"I don't know. Wrong impression, I figured he'd stay close to some friends. You mother. I don't know."

"It's not like that."

"I didn't mean it like that, Fitz. Good God, no! I mean, if I had- if I were to move, I'd go where my friends are just not to be alone. That's all." She pauses. "What about you?"

"What do you mean?"

"What are you going to do, I wonder."

"Something." He shrugs. "It still has to be settled, but something came up and I might accept the offer officially no matter what."

"Interesting. So, why are you here?"

"Radcliffe."

"No, I mean talking to me. You're not allowed into the room and it's almost time for you to go home, isn't it? No one forced you to come."

"I was having a chat with Radcliffe, couldn't wait." He stops and wipes his hands on his trousers and then fixes his glasses, pushing them up the bridge of his nose. He sighs. "I thought, well, I thought we could have dinner."

"Dinner?" she asks, her voice oozing bewilderment. The two-syllable word sounds foreign on her tongue. 

"Yeah. Me and you- we could have dinner."

"Why?"

"I don't know, there's a place close to Westminster that they say isn't that bad. We could try."

"What's going on?"

"Nothing."

"Why are you doing this, Fitz? Not to me, to yourself."

"What do you mean?" he asks. I heard about your father like the rest of the country, thought you could use some company, he wants to say. The words are on the tip of his tongue but he remains silent. "To myself. What's going on?"

"You tell me. You come here and we haven't spoken since April, I did apologize so it ends where it ends. I thought that that was what you wanted to hear."

"It is." 

"And yet you want to go and have dinner, I think we already exhausted our topics of conversation. It always came down to that  _ I'm sorry  _ and now that you've heard it I cannot possibly fathom what else there might be for me to add." She exhales, her breath cutting through the air. "You didn't crawl here to ask me to have sex did you?"

"God no!" He pauses. "It's just that. Dinner."

"I don't believe you."

"That's on you, Jemma. That's all on you. For all you know I could be seeing someone," he says insincerely. 

"Are you?"

"Does it matter?"

"No," she replies. "I don't give a shit about any of it."

"Are you angry? Did I offend you somehow?"

"No, but it seems to me that we said all that had to be said back in April."

"Jemma-"

"One way to end that conversation which we did. I said many a thousand unfair things that morning, I said them and take them back. I did insult you and I'm genuinely sorry. I didn't mean most of those things."

"Most?"

"Christ, you're being a clot."

"Oh, I'm the one being a clot, am I? Listen to yourself!"

"I'm working late, I'm afraid," she says flatly, changing the subject. "I can't just go and have dinner with you. And even if I wasn't- Bobbi's having a party."

"I know, I'll be there. We could have gone together."

"Fitz." She smiles. "Fitz, you don't mean that. We can't spend five minutes without arguing unless we're naked in bed. You can't possibly mean it. And if there is someone else, you have my blessing. Whatever was going on ended in April for all I care. There wasn't anything but sex so now there's nothing because we're no longer having sex. So let's say you don't mean any of it. Go on with your life. Be free or whatever people say in moments like this. Don't overthink it. You're not betraying anyone."

He looks at her, feeling as if she's merely trying to make him burst out of a glass cabinet. Her odd way to treat people, always steering them close to the edge.

"What if I do mean it?" asks Fitz, genuinely honest. 

"Still, if you are indeed working late-"

"I am."

"I do believe you."

"I wasn't insinuating that you weren't."

Didn't sound like it, he wants to add. Instead, he says, "If you change your mind-"

"I won't."

"If you change your mind and need to hear a voice on the phone, you have my number."

"Yes." She nods. "But won't call you so don't spend the entire party waiting to hear my voice. It won't happen."


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'd.

"Tiring weather," she says.

She lights herself a cigarette. Like an amateur. The match refuses to lit itself as she strikes its head against the box and the wood breaks in two, making it useless. She tries again as her movements become increasingly furious until the flame starts to crackle - the noise of the head catching fire at last swallowed whole by the noise coming from inside Bobbi's flat. She doesn't smoke, not really, but it seems more appropriate than drinking herself to death, swallowing down large gulps of alcohol in a desperate attempt at softening the edges and dulling her thoughts - the stench itself triggers too many memories of putrid hot breath against her neck for it to be an enjoyable experience. Anything else wouldn't do either and she is trying to be a responsible adult no longer trapped in liminal space, stuck at age ten with only ghosts and self-destruction to keep her company. Not quite peacefulness, not even close to sitting in an armchair crying all her tears, but the next best thing. Not that she can claim to be an expert.

"One has a hard time deciding what to wear. Cool mornings and warm afternoons."

"Yes, I dare say so," replies Fitz.

He looks at her, standing impassively close to the door. He looks dishevelled with a flannel shirt and an old out of shape cardigan with brown patches on the elbows. He looks different from the usual, more at ease, more like himself, and there's something oddly endearing about his transformation: less on his guard, more comfortable. The only things that aren't gone are his glasses and something about his attitude, the platitude of his manners so similar to the one he usually displays after sex. She cannot help but wonder though it seems rather unlike him, someone at the party, someone in-between the hours of work and social relationships. Derailing and the hint of jealousy spinning out of control, though she can hardly blame him or hold it against him: they haven't spoken to each other for months and she cut short their conversation earlier that evening; they haven't seen each other outside work for even longer, and yet the phantom presence of a person, someone well adjusted and completely in touch with their feelings, cannot leave her mind. Someone kind and gentle, treating him as he deserves, helped him out of his clothes, took him to bed, entertainment to forget her refusal or their row all that time ago, until her presence, the feeble memory of her that morning in April, standing in a luminous kitchen in an old and consumed t-shirt, completely removed from his memory. Eager and helpful hands. A room as hot as a bakery. And her blissfully ignorant, miles away, alone with her thoughts, trying not to care or think about Fitz. There may or not be someone but the treacherous fault wriggles in, fuelled by his former evasiveness.

I've never seen you like this, she wants to say but remains silent.

"Simply ghastly," she says before she puffs off a cigarette.

"They say we're going to have a week of rain," he replies and smiles, faintly, the corners of his mouth barely rising.

"God forbid." She exhales the smoke. "It's always such a nuisance. I'm headed home for a couple of days and the roads usually turn into a mess. Ruins the car."

"I wouldn't have thought of meeting you here." Fitz pauses and leans back against the brick wall. The faint glow of the light that comes from the living room, filtered through the white curtains, makes his hair looks golden, like a halo. "I'd- Oh, I don't know what I would have done."

"Hopefully not stayed at home."

"No, I promised Hunter I'd be here."

"Bally good."

"So, how do you and Bobbi know each other?"

"Boarding school."

Fitz laughs and smiles at her. "Of course."

"She left after a year, her father... Well, he used to work as an ambassador or something- Heartbreaking, really, to see her leave. We were having a riot. You and Hunter-"

"At some point, my parents decided to move around as a mean to save their marriage. Didn't work obviously, but we ended up in the outskirts of London for a couple of years. Hunter was my neighbour. Not a bad time, he used to come up for the summer holidays."

"Fancy seeing them together again. It seems quite final this time."

"Never works. Hunter is thinking about marriage. Again. You mustn't tell Bobbi."

"I won't."

"He says he just has to find the rings again. Well, technically he knows where they are, but lacks the equipment to retrieve them."

"If he says so." She laughs loudly. "I know I said that I'd be working late. I wasn't lying. I really meant it. I was sent home, actually, and I thought, well, I might as well attend Bobbi's dinner party. Get the chance to speak to you. Horrid day. Didn't feel like being on my own."

"You really don't have to explain yourself, Jemma. It was nothing but dinner. Nothing of consequence, I just thought I'd ask, there's that new place in-"

"Yes, you said."

"Just dinner," he repeats dryly.

In a place close to Westminster, the kind of place that attracts tourists who have to stop for lunch somewhere in the city after having spent their day purposefully walking around the city, admiring all sorts of historical landmarks. So why not do it close to the famous Gothic buildings, for a taste of Englishness and national identity, the rhythm of life scheduled by its noise, leaden circles travelling through the air.

Dinner, something unfamiliar and potentially new. Preferably mediocre. It doesn't feel like an excuse, like a prelude to a sexual encounter that would usually have followed. His tone remains too dismissive and calculated, accusingly to the point of making her feel defensive, so as not to allow any kind of double meaning to wriggle in and transform language into nothing but a pile of garbage with the power to enlarge the divide it was supposed to heal.

"Yes, I understood you the first time you said so."

Fitz laughs and tilts back his head. In the pallid moonlight, his features are barely distinguishable, but she could trace them from memory: his sharp jaw, the outline of his ears, his slightly Roman nose that sometimes reminds her of those marble statues safely preserved at the Tate or some other museum in central London.

"You would have saved me from those horrid sandwiches I keep bring back home from work and I'm pretty sure that I shall find them in the fridge with a life of their own." He pauses. "Jemma, I did hear what your father said on television. I didn't say anything earlier, but I did."

"Ah, that."

"Yes, that. I thought I could keep you some company. Thought it would help to be with a friend. Thought it could help. I'm sorry, it sounds rather silly saying it out loud."

"So that's why you invited me to dinner out of the blue."

"I know that we haven't exactly been on the best of terms as of late, but-"

"No."

"But I do know that-"

"Oh, you know nothing, Fitz." She laughs cruelly and coldly. "You said so yourself. I appreciate the sentiment, but don't you dare say that you know how I must be feeling or something equally preposterous."

"Preposterous?"

"Ridiculous then. Lord Jesus fuck! How much did you see?" she asks.

People sitting in front of the news, listening to her father, unaware of how rotten and indifferent he is, and perhaps cheering for him, without knowing, completely oblivious. The situation completely flipped to his own advantage thanks to a pity speech that lacked even a grain of truth, boosting his career rather than destroying it.

"All of it. Well, it was on the news."

"Did you believe him?"

"Not really, no. I don't know. It's sudden and calculated. Coming clean before it becomes a scandal."

"You don't know?"

"If he keeps his word."

"What makes you think that that is of any importance?"

"A thing like that? It's private."

"Blasted private, it was on the news and is going to be on every newspaper."

"He must have asked for permission."

"Ah, the one thing you were accusing me of not doing. I see it now. You must think him quite decent for having done so."

"Jemma, what did your father do to you? This goes beyond the whole corruption thing, doesn't it? There must be something else. You weren't a family, you haven't been a family for years and-"

"Don't. You're smart, Fitz..."

"It must have come as a shock."

"And yet you weren't using dinner as a euphemism? That wasn't an excuse to shag my brains out?"

"No-"

"I wouldn't have said no to that," she says.

"I thought you could use some company," he explains. "As I said."

For a moment she thinks that he will take her hand, their fingers close, mentally calculating whether she should simply push him away or close the small gap between them. She stuffs her hands into the pockets of her trench coat. She should stop being so prideful and toy around with her thoughts and feelings, stop being so stubborn and apologize for her behaviour yet again. It's self-destructive and unfair, she knows better than that. Instead, she says, "Company? What on God's green earth would I do with that?"

"Why are you always pushing everyone away, Jemma? You said yourself... You said that you didn't feel like being alone."

"I did, didn't I?" she asks. "It's been a long day. Never mind, I always treated you like this. I don't-"

"You know that people can feel empathy, right? You could try and explain what you're feeling, how you're feeling."

"You didn't give me the chance. Besides, it's too bloody late now. I apologized to you and meant it."

"I accepted your apologies."

"Without asking further questions. I say, let's leave it there. I can't help being as I am and you can't help being as you are, so I dare say that an infinitesimal part of all of this is your fault too. Let's hope fate is having a laugh at us, cursed be the day we met."

"Why do you always have to-"

"Sorry, I didn't mean to bite your head off."

"You say that an awful lot and here we are."

"Righto." She laughs.

"What were you going to say?" He asks. "Surely not that no one could ever possibly know how you feel, that whatever you say will drive people's feelings out of their heart."

She looks at him, his words slowly settling in the space between them. "Feelings? Goodness, that's quite a big word you used there. Alright. Look at us arguing. You must be thinking that I'm making all of this so fucking second rate, right after things got a little bit sour. Me? Can you believe it?"

"Jemma, you know that-"

"No, you are right. I am rather out of my depths here."

"Out of your depth? I say you bloody well are."

"What do you want me to say? That I still don't know what I did wrong? Don't be a clot. You wanted me to ask how I could put it right, didn't you? Feel superior one more time. Don't be ridiculous, Fitz."

"Let's say you were to explain what happened-"

"No, I have no intention of explaining anything. You didn't want to hear me out the first time and I most certainly won't do it here. Too bloody late. Listen, I feel like a laughing stock, alright? For the whole damn country, because all of a sudden there's another Simmons around and she can be twisted into the perfect child because, well, she didn't grow up as I did. Infuriating." She pauses and scoffs, presses her cigarette in the ashtray that sits on the small wooden table next to her. For a moment she considers lighting another one, but Fitz would surely leave rather than inhale her smoke for another five minutes - too polite to say it, perhaps, caring too much about these latest and unpredicted developments. "I can't help being like this, Fitz, so we're simply going to have to live with that. I loathe emotions and there are a hell lot of them at the moment, but they require investment on my part to be able to sort them out and I have no intention of even thinking about them ever again."

"That sounds idiotic."

"And what do you know about it?" She scoffs.

"Listen, do you want me to go?"

"No, I want you to stop..."

"What?"

"Nothing. I don't want you to go and I promise that I'll try to be perfectly civil for the next ten minutes, that should be enough time to tell you why I came here looking for, well, you." She pauses. "Perhaps it was for the best, saying no to dinner and to sex."

Thinking about it now, she cannot imagine herself sitting in his kitchen, a portion of disgusting fish and chips in front of her, talking about her father or work or the future no more than she can imagine herself laughing hysterically, her head resting on his chest, at the thought of the Simmons family finally coming undone after years and years, she may even dare say centuries, of a pitiful cycle of endless misery. Free at last, a new sensation like having turned into an orphan and thank God for that! Her father ending it on live television, just before the seven o'clock news, giving the whole country something to talk about. Food for thought for days on end! All good for him to come clean in front of a live audience. All good for him to end the parade and admitting his double life, claiming to be the victim. People must be pitying him, relating to him, find him dazzling and brave when the whole scheme smells like self-interest.

"It wasn't always about the sex. What we had going on wasn't merely about that. Now, I wouldn't have said no to... you know, all of that, but overall I dare say that it was starting to become something different." she says. "Dangerous oversimplification, is it not? Dismissive. Look where it got us."

She wouldn't have kept seeing him so regularly if it were. But sex is easy and understandable, it's something that she can easily comprehend and figure out without having to open up at all. It's something that can easily be explained and explained away: his cock, her cunt, and a room as hot as a bakery. Forgotten. Being crass to keep a safe distance, sending him away before he could send her away, and playing with him over and over - a horrid realization that leads to unworthiness and the long string of apologies at the back of her throat, ready to come out. She cares about him, genuinely and deeply, and there he is, maybe having moved on already to something different, something that suits him better, honest and with conversations that aren't confined by the four walls of a bedroom, made while thinking about ending things without ever being able to do so.

"Because we are friends, are we not?" he asks.

"So you've heard about papa," she replies, abruptly changing the subject. Her voice cuts through the air like a hiss, putting an end to his attempts at enquiring about the nature of their relationship, something she herself doesn't allow herself to think about. Suppose they were friends, what good would it? Suppose she liked him, suppose there is someone else in his life even just at the very beginning that tentative time of indecisiveness and fun before having to think about the future and eventually juggle between work, time together, and time spent alone.

"The whole country knows about it."

"And not because of me."

"No."

"You sound surprised. Does it take some strikes away from the great compt?" She pauses. "Never mind. One could see it coming from miles off. I've been to his place, the apartment empty but for a jar of mustard in the fridge... He's got a girlfriend now. Always thought everyone else to be terribly stupid when it's merely a matter of putting two and two together. Mama knew of course. Unbothered. Good God, can you believe that? I dare say it's the poison dripping down from one generation to the next. Your parents were miserable and their parents before them, why should you put an end to it rather than letting it deepen like a coastal shelf? It's the parade."

"The parade?"

"Among families of position. It's what we do and one simply cannot escape it."

"Jemma-"

"The Prime Minister was furious, of course, which is why I was sent home. Papa is running and people like him now, there is nothing to be done about it. They think him to be one of them, a man of the people as if he didn't spend his entire life thinking himself above them. They think I knew about it as though I care about whatever the fuck is going on in my father's head. To ask me whether I had something to do with it!"

Inside the living room, laughter erupts amidst the guests as a phone is passed from one hand to the other, lively chatter as some video is played all over again. It fills the air and reaches them, filling the space between them, and she smiles genuinely at the sound of people she has known for most of her adult life.

"It's political," she adds. "He is using his private life to his own advantage, eyes on the ultimate political prize. This family of his... They're just pieces in a game. I don't see how anyone could believe him when he has never acknowledged us. What's so different this time? Oh, sitting there with that vomit of lies about how much he cares about childcare and benefits because of his daughter... Now! He cares about it now! Where was that care when his own fucking daughter... Bloody late. Too bloody late to be believable. He wants to be the next PM and is trying to get people to vote for his party."

"As if anyone wants them-"

"Please, I'm sure you don't believe it either."

"No."

"No. Still, about that dinner-"

"I told you, it doesn't matter. It really doesn't, forget it. There's no need to bring it up all over again."

"Yes, so you said. Twice. But I was going to tell you that I could make it up to you and offer you breakfast. There's this most exquisite place in the town after ours, a ten minutes walk across the fields. Five if you cycle. Half a second if you drive. It really isn't that far." She pauses. "I tried calling you as I was leaving Number 10. You said that if I needed a voice on the phone, I could-"

"Rotten service, I'm sorry. My phone is in my rucksack, I was rather tired of all those emails. There are some things that are unfixable. Interesting move, I dare say." He pauses and looks at her. "You don't believe me, do you?"

"No, I do! I don't care! I'm not your babysitter, Fitz, and there's nothing... nothing much going on between us, nothing of any consequence. We were having fun that's it, that's all. When was the last time we saw each other? Must have been early April."

"Yes. Mothering Sunday." He stops and looks at her. "There were fresh daffodils in the vase in your room and it was sunny and warm, the first time in weeks. A perfectly proper day of spring."

"Months ago. You remember the daffodils?"

"It wasn't all bad, Jemma."

"No. I'd have asked you to go out for lunch, my treat. Then we ended up arguing, but I was going to invite you for lunch that day. If it means anything- If it means anything now... I just wanted you to know that." She stops and looks away. "I know that I've been rather crude, but I'd hate you to think that I wasn't... Then we stopped having fun, you walked out and we acted like proper grown-ups."

"More or less, but I was rather hoping that you'd call me."

"Ah, to tell you about papa, surely. For comfort? Well, bad luck!" She jokes. "I was going to call you to inform you that I have the country house all for myself. It's mama's, papa hasn't stepped into it for a month... since that horrid lunch, and she's in Wales for some charity event. It gets lonely. I'd have asked you to come over. Stuff some clothes into that rucksack of yours and reach me. A couple of days away from London, it did sound like a plan."

"Is that a euphemism?"

"If you want it to be. Who doesn't want to spend a couple of days in the country? And, alright, we could have had sex- it's always the intercom that brings on the change. If you wanted to, but that goes without saying. There are plenty of rooms, you could sleep in another wing altogether."

It would have been the most surreal and enjoyable experience to fuck (let her reappropriate a word that her grandmother always thought didn't belong in the mouth of a Lady) in her childhood bedroom - redecorated and turned into a guest room as soon as she left for boarding school, eliminating every presence of her already feeble and miserable childhood. Fuck Fitz, loudly, inhibited and unashamed, in triumph, trying to obliterate centuries of unhappiness with a couple of moments spent with Fitz, carving out some space in an oppressive and self-annihilating environment. Happiness and ecstasy. Or the next best thing. But it would have been theirs and they could have talked, maybe, perhaps, probably, before going to bed, before getting undressed, before kissing.

"Would you have said yes?" She asks. "God, look at you. You're blushing! To think you're the one who made the first move."

"The first move?"

"You're the one who asked me to go back to yours for a drink, for sex."

"I know."

"One has to admit that it happened at that dreadful dinner party and those can be rather excruciating and tedious, anything's better than just sitting there. One tends to envy children, sent to bed before the whole thing even begins. Safely away in their little rooms. Nevertheless-"

"Yes?"

It seemed destined to be or so it feels now, looking back, with a little more wit and clear-headedness. Getting into a fancy dress with the sole purpose of someone taking it out, green silk on wooden floorboards, in his small and crammed flat in Greenwich.

"Nevertheless, I am glad that we were both there. That you asked me whether you could kiss me."

"And to come back to mine."

"Yes, I remember! It must have taken a great deal of courage to do that."

"Lust is quite famous for stirring that up." He smiles sheepishly, grinning, his slightly crooked teeth exposed. "I'm glad you said yes."

"As am I. We did have a riot."

"We did."

"I regret not fucking you then and there as half of Westminster was discussing the quickest way to ruin the country," she jokes. "Think of the scandal."

"Imagine the titles."

"I'd rather not." She laughs.

"SNP supporter comes undone."

"Multiple times," she corrects him.

"Lady Jemma Simmons' sex shame."

"At least the dress was flattering and you did look rather dashing in that suit. It would have blown out in a week, not racy enough. I should know." She pauses. "Fitz?"

"Yes?"

"If you're not too busy trying to start your tabloid career... I came here tonight because I wanted to ask you whether you wanted to come with me or not."

"So you said. Not in so many words, but-"

"You should see the garden in the morning, and the two stone gryphons guarding the entrance look rather funny in the afternoon light." She coughs. "As I said, it gets rather lonely. And you said, well, that if I needed someone, you'd be there for me."

"Alright," he says, closing his coat and fixing his glasses. "But we have to stop on the road to buy condoms. I don't have any on me and I doubt that-"

"And dinner," she blurts out. "We must also stop for dinner. I have yet to eat and I highly doubt mama bothered with the shopping. But there is a very cheap restaurant next to Boots and we can get something there. On me."

"I'd love to."


	10. Chapter 10

"So here we are, this is your room," says Jemma as she opens the door. "I hope you like it."

"Thank you." He places his rucksack on the floor, carefully leaning it against the wall. "Jemma, I've had a very pleasant evening."

"Yes, me too. The food was altogether not too bad."

"No, it was excellent."

Fitz leans against the doorframe and looks at her, standing in front of him, her arms awkwardly dangling on her side as if she doesn't quite know what to do with them. Out of his depths, forgiveness has been granted and there is no need to restate it, it would simply break the easy-going atmosphere they somehow managed to create, not interrupted since they stepped into her car, not even by the awkward shopping at Boots - placing one couple of condoms on the counter, trying not to blush or stumble on his own words, as Jemma laughed loudly behind him. He has never seen her like this or maybe never properly felt like this in her company, the first interaction with the real world, two worlds crossing for the first time in the most simple of ways.

"Thank you for dinner," he says.

"Thank you for the free entertainment you provided in Boots." She pauses, stepping closer, ever so slightly, seriously and with some purpose, her movement swift and confident. "I've had the time of my life watching you as you tried to avoid making eye contact with the cashier. People do buy condoms, you know?"

"You're hilarious."

"One of my many talents." She shrugs.

He laughs, genuinely, and she smiles at him, grins, before suddenly placing her hand on his cheek. Carefully, looking for any sign of discomfort, he places his hand on hers - the most unexpected change brought forth by such a simple touch. Everything is different now, he thinks, irrevocably so. He can no longer lie and say that he didn't miss her in the past couple of months; that he isn't glad to have met her at that party and to have accepted her invitation; to spend a couple of days in one of England's finest country houses, ancestral homes and shrines to unhappiness and glory, frozen in time. Such gravity and intensity treasured in such an insignificant action, no levity and some doubts clouding his judgement, holding him back. There they were with things slightly better than they were earlier that day, apologies thoroughly voiced, and the awareness that they could have all of it back, something more, beyond and indefinable.

"I'm happy you're here," she says. "As I said, I didn't feel like being alone and your presence has been comforting. I didn't have this much fun in weeks."

"I'm glad we fixed things, eventually. While we could," he blurts out.

"Fitz-" She stops, her voice hoarse. His name sounds different on her lips, foreign, a new syllable creating a new sound with a whole new meaning. "Did you know that people here pronounce dykes as dicks?"

"What?"

"That's what I wanted to tell you at dinner," she explains. "It slipped out of my mind. One time-"

"Never mind that, the truth is that I've missed spending time with you. I've said it before, but- not like that."

The truth irrevocably spoken cannot be taken back and he feels courage deserting him already as he starts to feel like quite the coward. Behind the anger and throughout the sorry months he did miss her company, her imbecile remarks and enthusiasm, her clever takes. Talking to her and cracking the occasional joke when simple colloquialisms didn't do the trick. And there they are at last, again, after months, with time having passed quickly, weeks turning into months, as strangers and yet not so, not properly, not really - the past insurmountable and not to be dismissed.

"Yes. You look well, Fitz. Lovely. Fit."

"Fit?"

She shrugs. "Beautiful then."

He laughs. "You don't look too bad yourself."

"You should have seen me a month ago. I'm doing much better, I think, although I'll admit that these past few weeks... I'm on the case now, happiness and whatnot, it is rather messy. Something about realizing that you need help and deserve it too... These kinds of things don't come with a set of instructions, do they?"

"No, they don't."

"Lucky me," she jokes. "You're one of the smartest people I know, that's what I wanted to say."

"Are you flirting with me?"

"Does it matter?"

"The house is wonderful." He coughs and looks away. "The architecture is simply exquisite and that tree-"

"Oh, the oak tree by the entrance? Bloody nuisance, mama should have gotten rid of it years ago. It blocks the light and its roots shall one day ruin the house. I told her, if she leaves me the house, I'll cut it off. Hopefully, that will stop her." She pauses. "There's a wishing well in the garden. Out of use now, but there nonetheless."

They stay silent, frozen, half in the room, half in the corridor. Slowly, he turns his head around until his lips encounter her palm and he kisses it softly, tentatively, in exploration, testing the ground. It shouldn't be allowed to feel the urge to kiss her, all but irresistible, when he is desperately trying to not do anything that may ruin whatever they have now. He won't kiss her, not without permission, not while he is so scared of losing her, their relationship slipping between their fingers and out of their reach, leaving them dismayed. His feelings are rolling and rapid and he finds himself tongue-tied, unable to formulate half a coherent thought though he ought to say something about the house, about any topic that isn't them, about future happiness which he wishes her and would like that wishing well had a body to it, so she might feel it, another ally in the world, another friend - and what a strange notion when she herself had denied him the word, so stout-heartedly refusing to acknowledge that people might be at her side.

"As I said," she whispers. "You may admire it tomorrow without having to pay a fee."

"Lucky me."

"Indeed." She pauses. "Fitz, I know that we didn't- I must ask..."

"Yes?" he replies all too eagerly, his heart pounding in his chest.

"Oh, never mind. Is it alright for you if I give you papa's pyjamas? I dare say he's larger than you, but I shan't have you sleeping in your clothes. I should have given you a lift home so that you could pack, I didn't think..."

"No, it's fine. I'll take them." He pauses. "Thank you."

"Touring the house, then," she repeats. "Tomorrow."

"You know that I'm not here for that."

"No, you'd have chosen the worst season. Summer should do with mama's orchids and such."

He closes his eyes, her faint flowery smell fills his nostrils, resolute in not saying anything. Such dramas didn't suit him, the world in which they were staged completely alien and unfamiliar, like a foreign land and people there did things differently.

Don't go, he wants to say, don't walk away. He remains silent.

"Goodnight," she says. "Sleep well."

She leans in, aiming for his cheek, but her mouth ends on the corner of his and they remain there, caught by surprise, without daring to move. A soft and feeble touch, before she steps back quickly, embarrassed, her face flushed as she fidgets with the ancestral ring on her middle finger.

"Sorry," she says, "I didn't mean to-"

"Jemma-"

"I really should go now before I make things worse."

"Don't say that." He sighs. "You couldn't. You're not."

"Ah."

Slowly, he leans forwards with infinite and gentle delegations. Words feel inappropriate and any chance of formulating a coherent sentence is now lost, it's what they had and what they could have right in front of them, balanced on a sensible fulcrum, happiness at hands reach. It seems easier now, this thing that likes them as much as they like it, softening the blow and all edges, this shadow of a friendship, uncomplicating matters. His lips on hers, not a proper kiss, the very beginning of it and the moment closest to infinite: A kiss without a kiss and too many feelings entangled with the fear of not having talked enough, that they are once more on the road to oversimplification, that they are forgetting themselves and the real problem.

"Fitz," she whispers against his lips as her hands move to the back of his head, pulling him closer. "I don't know if we should be doing this."

"I don't know either," he replies.

"And yet it is but a kiss."

"It is."

She kisses him again, the tip of her tongue on his lips, and he parts them. Tentatively, languidly, getting lost in the feeling of closeness, of having her so close to him, his arms around her back, holding hare carefully in his arms, as if she were to disappear and he'd find himself alone in his bed in his cramped flat in Greenwich, thinking of her, the lingering presence of her memory mocking him. Dreaming nightly of her face and waking up, longing, his cock fuller but still merely hanging, the memory of her touch - her fingers and her mouth, the playfulness of her touch. And he can see themselves now, kissing, slowly making their way to the bed if only they wanted to, keeling over and falling right back in: history in the making, history repeating itself, feast your eyes.

They part, breathless, aching for more. For hands touching skin and physical closeness, the comforting warmth of the other's body now feels like the most obvious conclusion to their evening - deserved and looked forward to. Mutual nakedness. Tender gestures verging on worship.

"Goodnight, then," he says and coughs. Looking away.

She doesn't walk away, leaving him alone, surprisingly. For a moment he considers leaning in a second time and kiss her again, more fervently and passionately than before, unspoken words influencing actions, relying too much on body language for the first time, creating a new realm, a new form of communication with no space for misunderstandings.

"Yes, goodnight." Jemma pauses. "I'll go now."

"Alright."

"If you need anything, my room is the one at the end of the corridor. I'll leave the door open. If you're cold, there is a spare blanket in the wardrobe and you may use the bathroom upstairs. It's all yours. Would you like a glass and some water?"

"No, thank you."

"You know where the kitchen is. Don't worry about the noise, but you must know that one of the lights isn't working so it's the second on the left rather than the first."

"Noted."

"I'll leave you to it, then. Oh, and of course the window blinds are always stuck so let me just-" she walks into the room and he follows her, to the window in front of the bed, on the other side of the room, looking out on the driveway. He watches her as she fumbles with it, cursing under her breath before the clattering starts and the blinds come down.

"There you go, they've been like this since forever. I don't know how you usually sleep, but you may leave it open as papa and mama renovated a couple of years ago. Perfectly insulated."

"I'll just-"

"Well, it is a rather unfortunate position for a window. You must close it if you want to sleep in."

"Sleep in?"

"Unless you want to go out for breakfast as I did indeed promise you we would."

"No, it's fine."

"Alright then, that would be all." She sighs and wipes her hands on her jeans. Then she says, "I'll come back later with a clean set of pyjamas and some towels. I'll knock instead of barging in. It won't take long." 

"Just stay," he whispers.

They remain there, standing in front of the window, the unbroken black sky behind them and the first drizzle of rain whispering against the windowpanes. Just the light from the corridor, hardly sufficient to light the guest room, hardly sufficient to perfectly delineate any of the furniture or Jemma herself, standing in front of him like a dark shadow. Standing in front of her with trembling fingers, like a maid might have done a century earlier in that very same room and position, with perhaps a little more skill and hurry.

He has missed this, the building anticipation and Jemma, different from the usual, the memory of the easiness at dinner, sitting on two wooden chairs in the kitchen, drinking water and eating their take-away, stealing bites from the other's plate. They should have done it sooner. He has missed the feeling of all those infinite possibilities gathering up in front of them, the inevitable decisions about what to do and how to act around each other, leaning in and moving back over and over again, courage suddenly deserting him. But she is there, standing in front of him, skinny jeans and a woolly jumper, and colourful socks, like a work of art - familiar and unfamiliar at once, this new version of her less on her guard, not so on edge as before.

It feels now, as if dinner got rid of something, closed some of the distance between them, linear and effortless, showing them at last that it was something - this, all of it, the friendship and the sex, being liked - that could exist without having to bother too much about language and actions. He has never felt like this before, not with Jemma anyway, not in January or February or the months that followed and he wouldn't have dared imagine that it could be, that they could have it, not when standing in her kitchen at lunchtime, looking at her in disbelief, moving around and fidgeting while only wearing an old and washed out t-shirt, her leg encrusted with bodily fluids. 

"I've missed you too," she whispers, closing her eyes. "And you're right, we are friends. And we were friend too. All that time."

Friends, a new word with a different meaning. They had never dared use it before. Somewhere, somehow, behind all the crude realism and odd description of whatever they had going on - in everything but words. Pleasant company and yet what a surprise! As if she too had never considered it to be possible. A new revelation, lovers and friends though now the latter word fits better than the former, more truthful, he wishes they could start again all over, start differently rather than by asking her to come over for a drink, doing all sorts of things in the months that followed.

"I should go," she says and closes her eyes. "You must be terribly tired."

He takes her hand, quietly, his fingers reaching for hers in the darkness. Vain attempt before he looks down and grabs her hand with some purpose, his fingers dancing on her skin, curling at the contact until they are laced, sweaty palm against sweaty palm.

"Stay," he whispers. "For a little while longer."

Or for the entire night and the morning afterwards, let them sleep next to each other peacefully, in an overtly elegant guestroom, in an overtly ancient ancestral home, like two strangers on holiday for is it not what they are? Not a minute ago, standing in the doorstep, his back against the frame, kissing - why not resume? Why not take it to its more natural conclusion without further ado? Surely now, they simply could jump from formality to tenderness, a seamless and flat transition without any obstacles.

"I hope you like the room," she says. "It's the one with the most excellent view."

"I'll have to trust you on that."

"Yes, I dare say that you simply must. But you shall see for yourself in the morning. Of course, summer suits it better - they can't see in, but you can see out and when the sun is at its highest the room is golden and the lime trees green and all the flowers in the flowerbed beside the driveway look like a sea of colour. Mama has always been quite proud of them. And rightly so, I dare say." She pauses and retrieves her hand, wiping it against her jeans. "But I simply must go now."

"Must?" 

"I've told myself... I've told you that I would potentially have sex with you, but we shall ruin the otherwise perfect evening. So- In all fairness, I said I'll go."

"Stay, please. You can stay."

She looks up, eyes wide open in bewilderment. "We shouldn't have kissed, Fitz. I shouldn't have-"

"Don't-"

"Fitz." She pauses and takes his hand again, bringing it to her mouth and kissing his knuckles with overwhelming tenderness, as if a simple gesture could erase all harsh words even more than apologies. "I don't want you to think that I invited you to have sex and I don't want to hurt you and I'm quite good at doing just that, which is why-"

"What?"

"I do ruin everything."

"What if it doesn't matter?"

"You'll hate me in the end and that would be rather unbearable. But you mustn't think," she begins, kissing his knuckles again, boldly touching his skin with her tongue as she steps closer to him, as his breath shakes, faces now inches apart, and sudden warmth spreading through him, no longer feeling like the last chicken in Sainsbury. "That I don't want to or that I want to leave. You were right of course, about the concert, but it is no longer about papa or mama. It's about us."

"Us?"

"Yes. The two of us. No one else has to wriggle in, ruining things. No one else can wriggle in, ruining things. But we did all of this once already and wasn't it simply disastrous?"

It is history in the making and his heart, to borrow a sentence out of books, soars. He says, letting go of her hand, "Some of it. Not all of it."

"No, not all of it. But one could argue that it was most of it."

Gently, he raises his hand and cups her cheek as she did not long before, his thumb caressing her skin, and the pressure of her head against his palm increasing ever so slightly, exponentially, as she turns her head around, leaning into the touch. He smiles, though doubts that such action is visible in the darkness of the room, overwhelmed by affection tainted with lust, no longer ridiculous, something more familiar than it used to be.

"I do want to stay the night," she says at last. "Wake up next to you tomorrow morning. I may even help you get out of those clothes. Imagine that, like a maid, and you lordliest of the lordly. Undoing."

What a strange word, undoing. He tries to imagine how it used to be, at a time when the house had more inhabitants and proper staff, no tourists coming in every summer, driving with their rented cars after having flown across the ocean, sunglasses on. Let's say a century ago, or even longer, before the war, and right after, in this very room - maids and valets, helping people out of their clothes, sometimes the spouse must have taken care of that, evidence washed away by the maids the following morning, stained bedsheets hardly appropriate for the upstairs world. Flowery dresses on chairs and lace underwear ungallantly discarded with attention, carefully placed to the side. In and out of their clothes. Undone.

"Like this," she says, her hands on his cardigan, undoing the first button. "We can stop."

"Do you want to stop?"

"Do you?"

"No."

"And no."

Had she ever undressed him? He can't recall. There has always been such urgency in their movements, out of their clothes and right into bed, as if they had tried to keep thoughts away, leaning into lust and shutting the rest out, unable to catch up with them.

"Don't move," she says, as her fingers finish working on the button of his shirt, dropping it on the floor, pooling at their feet. Like some strange unveiling, one item after the other removed with patience and care. "I swear any person in the world would stand stiller."

"Your hands are freezing." He laughs. "It's hard not to move."

He looks himself around: an armchair, the wood of the armrests carved and ruined by time, a grey carpet on the floor, their feet sinking into it, a small wardrobe and the bed, perfectly made, the linen perfectly flat, perfectly clean, perfectly matching the colour scheme of the walls. Anonymous and impersonal, nothing there to give away anything about the house inhabitants except for their good taste and eye for detail.

"And look!" She says, as she carefully folds his trousers, something falling out of one of the pockets and onto the floor. She squats and picks it up, attentively studying the item. "Your Oyster Card. A hidden treasure. There, all undone but for your underwear. Are you cold, Fitz? You just have to say, I may turn on the thermostat."

"No. If I may-" He says, his hands fumbling with her jumper, lifting it up and removing the item of clothing with her help. His hands on her skin, under her shirt, on her stomach, cupping her breasts as he kisses her again, fervently, his body pressed against hers, clothes momentarily forgotten, his erection pressing against her and a moan at the back of Jemma's throat, marking a transformation, making his blood stir.

"Christ, Jemma," he murmurs as he unclasps her bra and throws it on the armchair.

"You'd be a terrible valet," she says as he buries his head in the crook of her neck, bodies close, not wanting to let go. He kisses her again, with some hesitancy, sweetly, trying to erase time and history itself, getting lost in the feeling of caution slowly disappearing, bolder and brave, the idea of idea loses some of its terrifying connotations. Artlessly she grinds against him, though he holds her tightly, curtailing all efforts and thoughts of reaching the bed.

She says, breathlessly, "I say, you are terribly useless when it comes to undoing. One has to do everything alone."

Removing her jeans proves itself as an action more difficult than imagined, she hops on one leg as she tries to slip out of one leg and then from the other, looking rather ridiculous in front of a window.

"I'll admit," she says, grabbing the windowsill to keep her balance. "I didn't think this through."

"Free entertainment," he says and grins.

"You just stand there laughing, they'd have sacked you by now."

He laughs louder, warmly, the noise filling the room as she finally steps out of her trousers.

"Glad I could be of help." She pauses and steps forward, tugging at his underwear, pulling it down, before taking his erection into her hands. He bucks his hips and she giggles, leaning her head on his shoulder, her whole body shaking.

"Fitz?" she whispers before kissing his neck, taking his earlobe into her mouth and flicking it with her tongue as he moves his hand between her legs, slowly stroking her, his fingers wet. She gasps, "I want to have sex with you."

"Yes, me too."

"But I need to know... There is no one else, is there? You haven't been seeing anyone in the past few months, right?"

"No." He tries to collect his thoughts in order to articulate a sentence. "I mean, there is no one else. There hasn't been anyone else since we-"

"And you didn't have dinner with someone either?"

"No, other than a bunch of friends every now and then."

She sighs. "Alright. I couldn't-"

She wants to say with surety that she isn't that kind of person, but she could be. It would potentially feel like her, the worst and most unfeeling version of her. She can't. Instead, she says "I don't want to be that kind of person."

"I know." He takes her in his arms, holds her close, strokes her hair. Flushed bodies touching, his throbbing erection momentarily forgotten. "Me neither. But there really isn't anyone, I swear."

She nods. "Condoms?"

"Rucksack. I'll take them."

He watches her move to the bed and undoes the covers, throwing them to the side, before lying down, watching him as he moves across the room. One look, like a draining, and no words, lying there, looking at him with amusement in her eyes as she turns on the light on the bedside table.

"What?" she asks as he switches off the light in the corridor. "I want to look at you."

Mutual nakedness and peacefulness, he studies her body as he deals with the condom, tearing the wrapping and placing it on the bedside table - silver in the yellow light - and puts the condom on with ease. Steeped in experience with none of the rush they once had, with none of the agitation or the well-known sense of haste that used to possess them, looking at her lying there naked, he thinks that he could never possibly forget her so maybe this should be their last gift to themselves before facing the unknown future.


End file.
